The Rouje Kith

Chapter 6

In summer, even taking a short half-hour lunch meant hitting Quartz Avenue well after daybreak. In winter it was otherwise, and cold as s**t too. The wind off the Marquette River was full of the silty stench of dead fish wheezing through pavement-floored canyons, and Zoe Simmons smelled ice behind it like a razor hidden in layers of folded quilt. The breeze tugged at her long dark braid; her brown coat with the ragged fake-fur collar reeked of cigarette smoke because she spent her breaks outside the receiving bays’ fire door, shivering but refusing to light up.

Smokers generally had a better sense of humor than the non-nicotine folks. Zo said she was trying to quit and played with a pen; consequently, they didn’t ask many questions. Most people liked talking about themselves more than anything else in the world, a fact well known to scammers, evangelists, and anyone with a legitimate reason to hide.

Zo crossed at 58th and turned north, stretching her legs; traffic was relatively light but no city ever really slept.

Not if you were in the right slice of real estate.

The heel of her left boot was loose, flopping in time as she strode along. This time of year in the Panhandle the temperature sometimes hovered a shade above zero, and her jeans were threadbare but at least nobody cared what a night stocker wore. You put in headphones and worked like hell, and that was enough.

Normally she’d already be at the squat, but every time she thought about crossing the street to get on the right track a cold little tickle slid warning fingernails down her back. Tiny light scratches, barely there but enough to keep her moving.

Two cities ago it might have been a prelude to an attempted mugging; last year in Akron it might’ve been Roy, but nobody knew her here. The satisfaction of a well-worked cereal aisle, the boxes flush and the bags of generics stacked in their wire baskets, faded before that chill tingle of danger. She couldn’t even feel good about getting out the door before the first customers trickled in to root through her shelves like goddamn hogs.

No, not hogs. Pigs were nice enough, they ate what you laid down and largely had the sense to leave you alone when you weren’t bothering them.

People were just the opposite.

The pachinko parlor on the corner of 62nd and Stark was lit up even this early, the proprietor reeking of body odor and layers of drugstore bodyspray, plopped like a mushroom on his folding chair by the front door. He barely glanced up as her shadow passed over the window. Zoe buried her chin in the coat’s worn collar and thought about her options.

It couldn’t be Royal. It couldn’t even be Pastor Bea. Which left r**e, theft, or just someone out for a good time.

The 28 bus chugged in the distance; if she timed it right, she could swing aboard just before it pulled away from the curb on North Pomoda. Not the best way to escape, but…

The feeling faded mid-block, and she only had to contend with the suspicion she was crazy instead of the undeniable feeling of shadowy pursuit. Her stomach settled, though a reek of diesel from a passing semi was hardly spring roses.

Mama liked pink roses. And rose soap, in those round little tins.

Mama liked pink roses. And rose soap, in those round little tinsThinking of Mama was a sure invitation to a day of fitful nightmares, tossing on the paper-thin single mattress she’d scrounged. Up all night, sleep all day was all right for a rock band, but when everyone outside was going about daytime business it was hard to get even five and a half winks, let alone forty.

Up all night, sleep all dayAt least in a squat the roommates weren’t too nosy. The junkies didn’t care as long as she didn’t have any cash on hand or anything to sell, the crazies gave her a once-over and decided she was vaguely pretty but not interesting enough, and the predators were easy to spot and avoid.

God knew she’d had practice. And how Mama would hate her taking the Lord’s name in vain, even inside her own blessed skull.

Blue eyes soft and thoughtful, Zo turned toward home with only a token doubling back on Harvey Avenue. The plywood flowers of boarded-up windows bloomed with increasing regularity, and broken glass glittered sharp and cold. The east was lightening; the sun died an early death behind the mountains and hauled itself up on the other side later and later until right before Christmas.

“f**k Christmas,” she muttered, hunching still further, and listened hard.

Nothing. Just the city breathing with traffic, a baby crying somewhere, the half-heard stirring as those in shitty apartments woke up for another day of underpaid labor and squatters collapsed in whatever blankets they could find after a night spent smoking, drinking, or eating whatever they’d begged during the day.

Maybe her instincts were off. Maybe Bea was right and she was possessed; maybe Mama was right and Zoe’d been marked by Satan from birth.

Angelina Simmons should know; she’d been present at the event.

Mama’s cracked-sweet soprano, whimpering as the morphine did its best to blunt the pain of cancer raving through liver, blood, and bone, lingered in Zoe’s brain. That sound pressed into walnut folds of grey matter, ran down in the dark wrinkles, dripped and filled like candle wax when the power got shut off and you needed some light to get ready for another day of backbreaking work for a handful of pennies.

Zoe turned down the alley, listening intently as she threaded her way between piles of black plastic bags, each a swollen egg. Where did they all come from? They never seemed to get hauled away or renewed, changing position only reluctantly.

There was never any shortage of trash. Like dandruff and pain, it collected in every crevice.

Two days to payday. Not even enough to get into a studio apartment, and forget a credit check. A hotel by the week was too expensive. There were other options, sure, but she didn’t like any of them.

The condemned building’s side door was still unlocked; she slipped through with a sigh of relief. It was just as cold, and stink-dark, but there was a certain relief in being inside your burrow. Everything sounded usual—the dealer and his girlfriend two doors down were having another fight. Pretty soon he’d hit her.

insideDepressing, and just like clockwork. It reminded her of Roy. Get it through your head…

Get it through your head…Snoring rose from the end of the hall. It was the homeless man she’d christened Bartleby, the one who screamed on the street corner about the Second Coming when he wasn’t deadass drunk and wallowing next to a rotting patch of wall. Frankly, his cries were like a little piece of home; Zoe’s lip curled as she slipped past, her boots silent. The padlock on the outside of her door wasn’t clipped, and she sniffed deeply as she slipped it in her pocket. Anyone watching might think she had a cold, but tasting the air was a survival mechanism.

Nothing out of place. Piss, s**t, rotting food, misery. Everything just the same.

So why was she so unsettled?

Getting inside—a maneuver practiced in the dark, no electricity here, no sir—took only seconds. More hasps from the hardware store accepted the two inside padlocks she changed regularly just to be sure, and she moved around the tiny, gloomy room, a faint edge of dawn showing around the plywood boarding up the small, thankfully unbroken window.

She could light the Sterno and heat something up, but instead she chewed on a tasteless protein bar lifted from work, washing it down with mineral water, and dropped onto the bed. Batteries were expensive and she didn’t feel like reading one of the mildewed books with her cheap LED lamp.

No tax returns. No rent. Nothing new, nothing flashy. No real address, no smartphone, no heating bill, no footprint, no trace. Mama would be proud, or maybe she wouldn’t. Angelina Simmons’s method—moving from man to man—wasn’t an option for her daughter.

Not now, or not yet. She’d learned her lesson with Roy. Maybe when Zo got a little older and rough living took the bloom off the rose it wouldn’t be a matter of pride anymore, but of no takers.

Even Mama had settled with Pastor Beaton, in the end.

That was twice in one morning thinking about roses and Bea, and that meant nightmares were coming, dismal and regular.

Zoe didn’t even take her jacket off. She could shower at the gym tomorrow before her shift, if she could sneak in. If not, there was the racquetball club on Marbery Street. This city was beginning to be familiar, which probably meant she’d have to leave soon.

She stuffed the thin pillow under her head, curled onto her side, and tried to relax.

It didn’t work. Still, she lay motionless, a long-limbed animal in its burrow, knowing goddamn well not to waste energy fighting until there was no choice.

Just show me where you are, the same soft, familiar voice said in the darkness, right before she fell asleep. Just give me a sign.

Just show me where you are. Just give me a sign.But she couldn’t. The tingle was back at her nape. It wasn’t the first time it had followed her home, and she was going to have to move on soon, God damn it.

wasMore blasphemy. Mama would say it was the devil after them both. Well, he’d done caught up, as Bea might say, and carried in Angelina’s own body too. Maybe Zo had a brain tumor and metastasis would do to her what it had done to her mother.

When she did drop into fitful slumber, she dreamed of a full moon and soft singing voices. Hot tears trickled between her eyelids; her aching body shivered and shuddered, caught in the trap of living but unwilling to give up.

Yet.