Purple Hearts(82)

I backed out of the room using my cane, gun poised.

My chest was heaving as I got into Rita’s car. I started the engine, reversed with a squeal, and watched Buda get smaller in the rearview mirror as the little pine tree air freshener dangled in the breeze. Sunshine crept through the cool air.

When I saw the exit for the Texas State Cemetery, I took a detour. The radio played that Bowie song “Space Oddity.” I turned it all the way up, up to Cassie-level volume, until I reached the gates.

My hands started shaking. The buzz had started to wash off, the clarity. I’d never beat someone so viciously before.

I moved from the blank concrete of the highway to the quiet, green oasis. Frankie’s grave was smothered. Yellow roses, white roses, daisies, carnations, chrysanthemums. Probably his mother’s doing. I cleared a small path, so I could see his name.

“Hey, Frankie.” I stood next to the obelisk. “I miss you, man. I’m sure you’re having a good time wherever you are. And you’re right, Lugia is the best Pokémon.”

I sat down.

“Cassie’s doing well. She’s surviving. I don’t know what caused you to put so much faith in either of us, but I’m glad you did. I think about you all the time. Especially lately. You had such a good head on your shoulders. You would have helped a lot of people.”

I realized I had been pulling up grass as I spoke, and now I had two big handfuls. “Sorry,” I said to all the souls, and let the blades catch in the breeze.

“I think I have feelings for Cassie,” I said, testing out the way the words sounded.

Feelings for Cassie. They sounded good, like a song title.

“We kissed,” I tried again. That sounded even better. We. What was I saying?

Only Cassie came out of the silence. Her black hair. Her honesty. Her voice. Her intelligence. The place where her thighs touched. The face she made when she was on the computer. The purpose I felt when I was near her. Even if it were my job to listen to her sing for the rest of my life, I would.

“What am I saying, Frankie? You’re the emotions expert.” I stood up and touched the top of the headstone. I guessed maybe I should speak to the woman herself.





Cassie


I woke to Mittens breathing in my face, waiting. I’d had the strangest dream. I was standing in my living room across from the futon in the late morning. The sun was shining warm through the windows that looked out on the front yard. My potted plants were gone, and instead, stalks and leaves had sprouted out of the cracks in the floorboards all around me, vines climbed up the walls, flowers drooped, resting on my bare feet. Somehow I had planted this greenery, and it was supposed to be here, warm and comforting around me.

I sat up in bed and heard music filtering in from the living room, and on top of it, a voice out of tune. The song was “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin. The voice was Luke’s.

I gave Mittens a pat on the head and slipped on shorts and a tank top.

Everything in the living room was like what I had imagined, except the plants were back in their places. Somehow they seemed fuller, though. I stood still. The sun shone. Luke was in the kitchen, limping back and forth from the stove. The air smelled like fried eggs.

“Good morning!” I called.

He couldn’t hear me over the music and a very exaggerated impression of Robert Plant. I tried to keep from laughing, and held up my hand for Mittens to stay. Luke had his back to me, poking at the skillet with a spatula.

“Good morning,” I called again.

He turned to me, shirtless, startled. “Oh! Good morning. Yeah. I was just . . .”

“Making eggs?”

Luke was still an anomaly in my close quarters, too big to fit, or at least he was now that he was upright, his six-foot-plus frame in my little kitchen. And especially after last night. The memory jolted me. Our bodies, together. I wondered why we didn’t stop ourselves before it got that far. Then I wondered why we stopped. I cleared my throat.

He gestured to the stove with the spatula. “Making eggs and working on some, you know. Vocal stylings.”

“Very good. You should consider starting a Led Zeppelin cover band.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Shed . . . Dead . . .”

“Nothing rhymes with Zeppelin,” I assured him, grabbing a glass for water. “Believe me, I’ve tried.”

I left him to the stove and caught a smile in my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was thinking about the recent uptick of his interest in music. Today was not the first day he’d started by putting on one of my records. He was just as he said he was, a straight classic-rock fan, but I could put on something rock-y but obscure and get a curious glance out of him.

We emerged at the same time, me with my face washed, him from the kitchen with two plates.

He sat, I sat. Over-easy eggs, still steaming, and avocado on toast. The last time we were here, we were holding each other. He’d revived me. He’d cried into my hair. Now his elbow touched mine only on occasion, balancing the toast to his lips, trying to get the crumbs to fall on the table rather than all over his leg brace.

“What are you gon’ do t’day?” he asked, his mouth full.

I laughed. “Eat eggs and avocado.”

“Oh, yeah?” He took another bite. “That sounds pretty good.”

“What are you doing?”