Strangers Among Us

Dallas's Booth-2

The tiny fragment of Dallas’s ego that believed he could man-up vicariously played out a scenario. Next time she makes a call, I’ll open the door and descend one stair at a time. Like Mom. Once I reach the bottom, I’ll glide through the front door and pretend to wait for the phone booth. When Becky cries, I’ll offer comfort. His heart pounded at the thought of holding her, being the man that she so desperately needed. The stairs, demons of deception, snickered at his plan.

He shoved on the headphones, unable to block the mockery. He took slow, deep breaths, trying to control his fear as he waited for the world to wander into proximity.

A caller shouted, “How could you be stuck in Niagara Falls?”

Drug-dealer-Bob again. The ass-hat looked as though he hadn’t slept since Tuesday. Bob’s unknown partner-in-crime must have woven one hell of a long excuse on the other end of the call because the drug-dealer didn’t speak for three minutes.

“Get back here, quick. I need you for a Friday delivery.” The Bob on Dallas’s live-feed picked his nose and wiped it on the inside wall of the booth.

How the hell am I going to clean that off?

A pause.

“What about Saturday?” Bob picked his nose again.

If you wipe that on the glass, I’ll come down there, and . . . you bastard!

The other person must have imparted a heap of bad news. Bob made a fist, pacing back and forth and kicking the door of the booth. Finally, Bob slammed the receiver. The equipment caught off-the-phone expletives in the five seconds before shutting off.

The sunbeam had already caressed the foot of Dallas’s squalid bed on Friday morning when his equipment auto-activated. Did I forget to turn it off last night? Dallas sprang for his cane. By the time he reached the lime-green chair, he could hear Becky’s sobs.

“He’s furious, Mom. I’m so scared. What should I do?”

Dallas screamed the thought, Leave him! in Becky’s direction.

Her mother must have said the same words, because Becky said, “I want to. I do. But he’ll come after me.”

Dallas took a long, deep, encouraging breath, grabbed his cane, and headed for the door. The key hung where it always did, dusty and unused on the nail beside the frame. He stuffed it in his pocket, opened the door, set the spring lock, and yanked the knob behind him. He leaned against the closed door, glaring at the stairs.

Only two flights of eight.

Sixteen slippery, steep, worn-down, ugly steps.

His mother managed the trip every Wednesday. He’d done it himself, countless times, before his accident. Before his leg morphed into a dark-alley freak-show.

He inhaled, gripped his cane, and took a guarded step toward the staircase. And then one more.

After three hard swallows, and one hyperventilating fit—during which he experienced the acrid stench of the neighbour’s curry—he forced his feet to move to the brink of the summit.

Looking down made his head spin, so he focused on the ceiling. The holes of peeling paint had grown bigger and more numerous than the last time he’d stood here. The remaining paint had faded from brown to gray.

He gripped the handrail. Remarkably, it felt solid in his hand and did not—as he’d expected—break free of the wall in a crumbling mess of rust and wood. He waited, motionless, staring at the pock-marked ceiling, remembering a time when he’d taken so many aspects of his life for granted.

Sixteen risers. Eight-and-eight repetitive movements of the feet, each bringing him closer to life outside of the roach-nest he called home. Anyone could do it. Except for Dallas, the broken cripple.

“Becky needs me,” he told the stairs.

They didn’t answer.

He moved his foot forward, bit his lip, closed his eyes, and pulled back in a panic. “I can’t!” The sound of his admission echoed off the empty walls, pounding him with humiliation. Turning on his heels, he pulled out his key, fiddled with the lock, and stumbled into his apartment. The deadbolt flipped with a satisfying clunk.

Safe. Defeated.

Once his pounding heart slowed, he shuffled to his lime-green chair. Searching through folders for comfort, he played Becky’s call.

“I’m going home, Mom.” A pause. “Only a small bag, with enough for a couple of days.”

“It’s about-f*****g-time,” he said aloud to replay-Becky.

Dallas spent the remainder of the day snacking on cherry Pop-Tarts and waiting for Becky to use his booth. To summon her mother for their freedom-ride. At two minutes after seven-thirty, his heart skipped a beat when she opened the booth’s door. Fresh blood drizzled down her chin from her split lip, the bruise over her eye now dwarfed by deep wounds all over her face.

“Mo?” She sounded as though she’d stuffed cotton in her mouth. “E roke my yaw.” She cried as she listened to her mother’s advice.

Dallas gripped his cane with a surge of newfound strength and deeper, more intentional resolve. With the key still in his pocket, he charged out the front door.

Outside, with the door behind him, his surety faltered. The precipice so close, so endless. With thoughts of that poor woman, crying, broken, waiting in his booth for someone to save her, he gritted his teeth and stepped down.

One.

He panted there, exhausted. Fifteen more. Three times five. My age on the night of my first hickey.

He raised his good leg and stepped down.

Two.

The only even prime. The surgical floor at the hospital. He remained upright, safe from the stairs’ games.

Moving another step down, he thought, Three.

The first odd prime. The number of pins in my leg. The grade I barely passed, the year my teacher kept me during recess to explain how Daddy’s heart had attacked and killed him.

Dallas gulped some much-needed oxygen into his lungs, and took another step down. Then another. Three more.

Safe on the landing.

“I’m halfway,” he told the stairs. Leaning on the windowsill, he celebrated the milestone while the sun beamed through the cracked window. He could still smell the neighbour’s curry from above, now mixed with hints of lemony-fresh laundry soap from below.

Eight more.

Two times four. Two cubed. The number of strangers who donated their blood for me.

He limped toward the crest’s precipice, clutching the railing. “You’re good. Do it. Now!” Before he chickened out, he descended the entire flight of eight steps without stopping.

Gasping for breath, from pride more than effort, or maybe fear, he stood in the vestibule, eyeing the mailboxes. His mother had the only key. Forget the mail, Becky’s in imminent danger.

He pushed the main door and faced the outside world. Fresh air. Smoggy air, in reality. Despite the exhaust fumes, he took a deep breath and held it for a long while.

Becky lingered in the booth. She turned her back on Dallas when she saw him staring at her, and covered her broken face with her hand. He limped to his booth and fumbled in his pocket, pretending to search for a coin. When the door opened, he looked up at her, and said, “Miss, I—”

Without making eye contact, or saying so much as a quick, “Hi,” she dashed across the street, slipping between a streetcar and a cube van, disappearing into the Quick-Stop Variety Store.

Dallas held the door to his booth with his right hand and his cane with his left. His moment with Becky had been nothing more than a microsecond of awkward failure. Standing, exposed and defenseless on the street corner, he ducked into his booth for protection, picked up the receiver, and returned it to the hook. Noticing Bob’s disgusting snot on the plastic wall, Dallas pulled a tissue from his pocket and tried to wipe the mess away. The flimsy thing only spread the goo into a bigger glob. With his thoughts on Becky, Dallas turned to leave his booth, and froze, standing face-to-face with Dope-Dealer-Bob.

“Are you going make a call, or what, d**k-bag?”

“I, uh. . . .” He gripped his cane and started out of the booth, staring at his feet, mumbling, “Forgot the number.”

Bob shoved past and closed the door.

Dallas waited outside, listening.

“Tomorrow’s no good. I don’t have . . . f**k. I’ll call you back.” Bob hung up and stepped out of the phone booth, looking past Dallas as though a mangled freak could actually be invisible.

Dallas turned to follow Bob’s sightline. Becky stood frozen outside the variety store, staring at Bob.

“Get over here, b***h!”

She waited for a gap in the traffic and then hurried across the street, head down. She mustn’t have seen the looming minivan. Its grill grazed her shoe and she stumbled to the ground next to them, safe but startled.

“Beat it, cripple.” Bob shoved Dallas hard, sending him sprawling to the pavement.

“I yeeded shome. . . .” She reached into her bag and brought out a box of feminine protection products.

Bob slapped her across the cheek. Blood poured down her messed up chin. “Put it away. I hate girl-shit.” Bob-the-Drug-Dealer was, in reality, Doug-the-Husband. One and the same. A wife beater and a criminal. The bastard used the booth for his office. Doug grabbed Becky by the arm. “Come on.”

Still sprawled on the ground, Dallas crawled toward his cane. You’re not dragging her away, he thought. Not this time. Not ever.

A silver Buick with tinted windows pulled over to the curb beside the quarrelling couple. The power window, on the passenger side, hummed down revealing a woman driver alone in the car. The plump woman’s gray hair matched her wrinkled face, the creases so deep she looked as though she’d been carved out of clay. “Gwen!” she shouted from the car.

So that’s Becky’s real name.

“Get in the car.” Her mother sounded firm and frightened.

“f**k you, old bitch.” Doug dragged Gwen away from the car.

Gwen dug in her heels, but Doug outweighed and out-muscled her. Dallas willed her to fight harder, kick the guy, do all that she could to get away, but she seemed to have given up. She looked like a broken doll being punished by the mean kid at recess.

As Doug hauled Gwen around the corner and into the quiet side street, her mom abandoned the Buick, leaving the door open and the engine running, to hurry after them. “Let her go. Right now!”

Gwen sobbed.

Dallas hobbled to his feet with the help of his cane. He couldn’t allow Gwen to move out of sight.

The commotion caught the attention of a young woman smoking a cigarette on her front porch. She yelled, “Hey, leave her alone or I’ll call the cops.”

Doug held up a hunting-style knife and yelled, “Mind your own f*****g business, bitch.”

The smoker stubbed out her cigarette and disappeared inside.

Gwen’s mother yanked her daughter’s right arm, trying to wrench Gwen free. Doug held firm to the other arm.

Dallas lurched toward the conflict. A car sped past him, up the side street, honked the horn at the tug-of-war, and kept moving. Once Doug took Gwen home to the privacy of their apartment, her man would teach her the worst kind of lesson, ensuring Gwen never ran away again. Ever.

Doug kicked at Gwen’s mom, to force her to release her daughter’s arm. Gwen blocked him with her own body. The scene played out like a surreal crime drama.

A streetcar stopped and three passengers disembarked. They each stared at their cell phones, earbuds stuck deep, oblivious to the volatile situation unfolding a few feet away. Assured that no one would stop him, Doug punched the old woman in the chest, sending her flying.

“Awk,” mumbled Gwen.

Close now, Dallas saw a spark in her eye, a flare he’d never seen before on his live-feed. Gwen pounded at Doug, her fists and shoes an explosion of fury, hitting more air than man, as though she’d stored every ache in a jar, and now smashed the glass and everything inside it deep into the source of her anguish.

Dallas raised his cane with both hands, holding it like a hammer people used to ring-a-bell for a prize. With sweaty hands, he called up every ounce of frustration that he’d felt for Gwen, for her mother, but mostly for Doug. The cane arched, smashing into the back of Doug’s head.

He dropped. Dallas made contact again, screaming, “Damn you!” with such ferocity that spit flew from his mouth. For this blow, he used all of his contempt for every stair that had distanced him from the outside world.

Gwen and her mother stood motionless, watching. They stared at Dallas like a fiend and a champion, all stuffed into one crumpled package.

He smiled weakly, holding the bloody cane behind his back, ashamed of his brutality. “You’re safe now B . . . Gwen. You should go with your mother.” He pointed his head toward Doug. “I think he’s done.” Across the street, the smoker stood on her porch again, clapping.

“Ank ou.” Gwen reached out a hand to touch Dallas, changed her mind, and pulled it back.

“Hurry,” said Dallas. “He won’t hurt you anymore.”

The mom asked, “How do you know my daughter’s name?” The two women supported each other with a hug-hold.

He shrugged. “You called her by name.”

“What’s your name? No, on second thought, I think it’s best if we don’t know.” She guided her daughter toward the open car. Gwen climbed into the passenger seat of the Buick.

Dallas followed, waving goodbye. The car window hummed closed. He watched them disappear around the corner, and then returned to Doug, studying the man’s chest for movement. He lay still. Dallas wanted to say something profound, some hero-epitaph that would torment Doug on his way to hell, but he couldn’t put any meaningful words together.

He looked over at the smoker. She shouted, “Beat it. Before the cops come. I didn’t see jack shit.”

He grabbed the knob of his cane, his hand slipping on the blood. He thought about extracting a tissue from his pocket, but his hands had blood on them, too. He knelt down and wiped all of the mess onto Doug’s shirt. The red stain looked vivid and hyper-real against the stark white T-shirt. Blood red, not cherry red. Would Gwen, her mother, or the smoker snitch? Would the cops take one look at Gwen’s face and call it all justice?

No matter what, I saved her. She’s free.

And so am I.

His stomach growled. He searched Doug’s pockets, relieved him of his cash, and headed across the street to buy a box of blueberry Pop-Tarts.