Breaker Read Free Page B

van.
    She watches Ray, never Raymond, because she sees in him something that she recognizes in herself—she sees the boy he used to be, before puberty and his growth spurt, before his light brown hair lost all of its color, fading to a light blond, almost white, as if scared to death from something it had seen. She sees a boy with a vivid imagination, a bucket of Legos turned into a castle, Matchbox cars in the dirt, a world built out of twigs, and mud, and desperation.
    She is not afraid of Ray. But she should be.
    Her threadbare white curtains are dusty, drawn wide to let in more light, tears at the edge of the frayed fabric, snow-covered mountain ranges if you don’t squint your eyes and look too close. She also frequents the local thrift stores, finding brand-name clothes for pennies on the dollar, where she’s seen the angry giant looking at furniture, selecting anything dinged and torn, to match his disposition. And yet she sometimes hears him humming, singing a lyric here and there, and she can almost feel him smiling when he’s like that. It’s contagious. A few words are snatched out of the air—
home alone,
desire fire,
dull soul,
wet head
. She knows it by heart now, and sings along to the ballad—softly to herself. It is comforting and familiar.
    She can feel his footsteps, if she concentrates, his heavy boots thudding around his living room, or out the back steps into the alley, or at his apartment door, the lock snicking shut, down and out, passing by her front door, her eye at the peephole, his gaze drifting toward her. Sometimes, when the moon is full, peeking into her bedroom, and she can’t sleep, she’ll head to the back of the apartment, a mirror image of Ray’s apartment, past her father asleep on the couch, empty beer cans and a smoldering cigarette in an overflowing ceramic ashtray. Past her mother snoring in her bedroom, where she lies on top of the sheets as if broken from a long fall—arms and legs akimbo, short shirt riding up, her panties black and lacy. Natalie will stand in the kitchen over by the window, in her nightgown and bunny slippers, and stare—listening for his return. More often than not, he’ll slink up the steps and glide by, covered in bruises, limping sometimes, muttering. Crying only once. In the morning she finds dots of red—blood coins left on the wood.
    Tonight, she hears him go, but misses him at the door, only a shadow drifting by, a hint of something musky and sour, a sharp note of something sticky and sweet. He is an aging grizzly bear lost in a forest, one ear with a bite out of it, his back hunched, fur falling out in patches, mange spreading across his damaged hide. He is a dying dappled mare that is bowed in the middle, slow and dense, chomping on hay, eyes rolling back up into its head, tail swatting away the flies. He is an ancient archaeopteryx, feathers falling to the earth below, gliding over the land, its wide shadow casting darkness and cold, a guttural caw, its talons sharp, swooping down to grab its struggling prey, whooshing by her, scaring off the wolves, as they slink back out of sight, her eyes glowing and filled with tears.
    She sees him, yes, she does.
    And he sees her, too.

Chapter 5
    The Logan Avenue el stop is underground, not actually elevated at all—at least, not at this point. Soon the long snake of metal will push its way slowly uphill and emerge from the earth as if waking from a dream, seeking sustenance as its tongue wags in the air, sniffing.
    For now, I sit and rest. Sunglasses on, I retreat farther into myself, hiding in plain sight, and yet every woman that walks past me shifts her purse or bag to the other side, out of my reach, as the seats on both sides of me stay empty. They will remain empty for the entire ride—men in suits, boys in jeans all preferring to stand, tightly grasping a metal pole, eyes on me, never turning their backs. As if I might do something violent, stand up and tear my clothes to shreds, Hulking out