The Sharp Time Part 11

Bradley frowns.

So. How could I have known those bullets wouldn't work in my gun? The culture of violence is new to me; my mother would not kill a bug. If she found a daddy longlegs in the house, she would pick it up and cup it in her bare hands; she would giggle and scold it. "You stop! That tickles!" I would stand at the kitchen window and watch my mother crouch down in the backyard, the sun in her hair, and open her hands for the spider. Wow, I would think, what a freaking nutjob.

Bradley switches on the dome light, examines the gun with his eyes squinted in concentration, like a jeweler. "The serial number has been sanded off. This is n.o.body's gun. But it's highly illegal."

He puts the gun on the seat and drums his fingers along the top of the steering wheel before he starts up the car, and I'm thinking that the stress of this night will make him hit the ganja pretty hard. He smokes way too much; I see that it affects his decision making, though probably I shouldn't judge.

"You know, in any case, a gun isn't the smartest item to be toting around in your car."

This from someone never without a bag of weed!

"I know. But thanks for the tip."

He looks into the rearview mirror, and then opens the car door. He flings my gun into the banked snow; he heaves the box of bullets out with a wince.

"Hey! What-"

"Sorry. Just an impulse."

"But Jesus, it's mine. The gun was a gift," I say, as if I'm wearing a pink frilly dress and have fluffy curls. I notice that my whole trunk hurts, not just my rib.

"The last thing you need is a gun," Bradley says.

As if we are so different, as if he's suddenly a bearded sage sitting cross-legged on a hilltop, meditating and eating unsweetened yogurt whereas I'm a random meth head swilling Dr Pepper for my sugar jones, having s.e.x with strangers for quick cash.

"Well, Bradley, what's the first thing I need?" My face is sleeved in pain. I touch my hand to my forehead and feel the Cro-Magnon b.u.mp. "Could you perchance tell me the seventeenth thing I need?"

Bradley ignores me. As we drive off, the Taurus pulls to the left, so Bradley has to constantly correct it with sharp little turns to the right, but it drives. It will get us home.

So it's good-bye to my gun-girl self. But say I really wanted to get a gun. Say I sought out bullets that worked, that were the right fit. How hard would that be? Given that I didn't even know I wanted a gun in the first place? Given that I learned I have the gift of good aim?

Bradley takes the interstate downtown, the car miraculously chug-chug-chugging away in the slow lane, the little midsized economy car that could. He drives us to Thirty-Eighth Street, where the Pale Circus glows with its warm lit windows, with the headless mannequin and her implicit scarecrow's lament: If I only had a brain.

"Back to work?" I say.

Bradley tries for a bit of levity. He sings the Snow White song: "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's back to work we go!"

But with the spent air bag brus.h.i.+ng my sore legs, with no gun amping up my bada.s.s self, I think of Snow White in her agony, Walt Disney's poisoned princess laid out in her clear coffin, wearing her yellow dress with the starched collar, awaiting a kiss. And of course Catherine Bennett appears in my mind, holding up her teacher's textbook like a poisoned apple, smiling at Alecia Hardaway, at me.

Bradley parks, gets out of the car and walks over to my side, gallant and limping. He motions for me to unroll the window.

"I'm going to try out my neighborhood connections," he says with a wink.

I roll up my window and watch him lope across the snowy street, my sore head pressed to the gla.s.s. He goes into the liquor store; through the front windows it looks like a blurred carnival of boozy light and moving bodies, as if in the midst of a late-night clearance sale. There is just enough light to see a monk coming out of Erika's Erotic Confections. He has his head lowered, his hood up. He waits on the sidewalk next to Erika's car. And out comes Erika: jeans tucked into storm-trooper snow boots and a leather jacket with the collar flipped up. She has her purse on her shoulder, but it slips to the crook of her arm when she turns and locks the metal door of her shop.

The monk stares down at the sidewalk, which the soft new snow has turned to silk. I cup my hand to my sore mouth and touch my puffed lips, watching. Erika and the monk exchange no words. With his hands in his robe pockets, the monk watches her get in her car and drive away. Perhaps what they are giving each other is more than forbidden, starlit romance; perhaps it's not that at all, but the protection of friends.h.i.+p. The monk stands on the sidewalk until Erika's car lights fade into the darkness. And then he trudges up snowy Thirty-Eighth Street in his sandals, heading for home.

Bradley comes out of the liquor store triumphant, flas.h.i.+ng a thumbs-up sign as he slip-slides across the street, brown bag raised over his head like a bowling trophy. Not cool: if any undercover cops are lurking, we are further screwed. I haul my sorry self out of the car, and together we cross the frozen sidewalk in front of the Pale Circus.

I take a quick look back at my car, the crunched front end. From behind you would never know anything was wrong. And I mourn my mother yet again as I remember using fingernail polish remover and a putty knife to take off her embarra.s.sing, self-aggrandizing b.u.mper stickers: KEEP YOUR THEOLOGY OFF MY BIOLOGY, THANK G.o.dDESS, THE ONLY BUSH I TRUST IS MY OWN. I wish I'd left them on, in memoriam, instead of sc.r.a.ping them off, because the b.u.mper stickers were a sign of my mother's essence. The bottle of lemon-scented fingernail polish remover and the putty knife, well, that was pure me: Little Miss Lemming.

Bradley takes a ring of keys from his jacket pocket and unlocks the front door.

"Let there be light," he says, his voice grandiose as Vegas Elvis's.

And he flips the switch and here is the glorious landscape of cotton and wool and acetate, satin against the night sky, and yes it's lovely, but I'm thinking My gun my gun oh my sweet gun. And Catherine Bennett smiles and says, Have you been paying attention?

Does no one understand how completely easy it is to get a gun? Will no one give me an ounce of respect?

Bradley puts the brown bag on the cash desk. He takes off his jacket and rubs his elbows as he looks at the thermostat. He turns up the heat, which will take a long time to kick in. Bradley takes the bottle-champagne-and two plastic cups out of the bag. He pops the cork, and champagne bubbles up and spills on the gleaming hardwood floors. Both of us go lurching for the paper towels beneath the register; Henry Charbonneau has us trained.

Bradley snaps a square of paper towel off the roll and wipes up the spilled champagne. Then he folds two paper towels into elegant octagons and hands me one. I pour the champagne and we raise our cups in a mock-glamorous toast, our aching arms linked. He looks at me very seriously, as if he might cry, and says, "Sandinista, we survived the car wreck-"

And here he seems like a drama mama most supreme, because a car careening off a suburban street and smacking into a cottonwood tree is rarely a death sentence. It is just what it is, some bad luck, just like the Cutla.s.s that jumped the curb and killed my mother was pure bad luck and Catherine Bennett was-is-Alecia Hardaway's bad luck. Or do we have the power to change fate? If not our own, someone else's?

I blot my hurt lips with the paper towel and come away with a red-russet stain, the color of an autumn lipstick.

Bradley puts his hand on my shoulder and says, "We survived the car wreck. And had I died, oh, it would be tragic, heaven knows, and Robert could do my funeral Ma.s.s, he could plant the old Judas kiss on my embalmed lips and whisk me off to heaven."

"He would certainly weep for your handsome young corpse."

"I hope he would slit his throat," Bradley says dreamily, staring off at a canary-yellow coat on a display form, the genius of its jeweled white b.u.t.tons, the softly flared collar. "But really, it's only important that you didn't die, Sandinista. You are ... the last of your tribe. Which I realize is a corn-dog thing to say-add a root beer float and order of fries and you're good to go, Miss. But, you are ... the last."

I feel my throat close, so I take a long drink of champagne.

"And so the whole business with the gun-which is your business, granted-it just seems like a bad idea. You can't do anything that is going to hurt you."

And there's a lot of h in his hurt. It is a long, awkward softness of hhhhh. The sound of it makes my mouth hurt even more.

I'm afraid he's going to cry; I'm afraid I'm going to cry, so I take the wheel and drive us off this steep road. I say: "You know, I thought you were in love with Henry Charbonneau. I thought I picked up that vibe."

"No," Bradley says sadly. "G.o.d, no. Did you really think I would find his dissertations about the proper way to Swiffer for maximum detritus pickup to be some sort of red-hot aphrodisiac? Give me some credit, Sandinista."

"True, his cleaning advice is a bit of a cold shower. But technically he's so beautifully handsome," I say.

"Technically, yes, he is," Bradley says. "Last summer when I first started working here, we almost kissed one time when we were both drunk. We were, like, a half centimeter away from it. But then Henry Charbonneau said, 'Do you want me to burn in h.e.l.l for all of eternity? Go forth and live your life with fellow young people.' Do you know that he's positive?"

I look at my fancy, snow-stained shoes and take another gulp of champagne. "That sucks. But, can't you live, like, for fifty years on all the good medicines they have now? The new HIV c.o.c.ktails?"

Bradley shrugs. "Well, sure," he says, his voice charged with sarcasm. "But still, it would trouble a person. It's still kind of a bulls.h.i.+t thing to have at the back of your mind all day long: I have HIV. Will my medicine let me live for fifty years?"

And I'm thinking who in their right mind would want to live for another fifty years, and also: What is wrong with me? "Right," I say. "It's terrible. Of course it's a terrible weight." I take another sip.

"Although Henry Charbonneau is filthy rich, so there's that," Bradley says. "He can get the best medical care. He's Mr. Trust Fund."

He runs his tongue over his chapped lips, a brief comfort. With his finger and crucified thumb, he pulls away a flake of dead skin. "Still, anyway, when I take money from the register I always pay it back. Even though Henry Charbonneau doesn't need the money from the Pale Circus to live on; it probably doesn't even pay for his personal dry cleaning. I pay it all back anyway."

And I know this isn't quite true, but it doesn't matter to me in the least. "Borrowing isn't stealing," I say, and Bradley could not agree more.

By the time we finish off the bottle, we both feel a lot less sore. The champagne gives us a kick of wheeeee! And all the sublime colors of the Pale Circus pinwheel through my mind, the blues and lavenders, the soft cherry-pinks and groovy greens. We sit in front of the display window and stare out at our white city, the velvety snow-globe fantasy of it all.

Bradley looks down at my platforms and says, "Take off your shoes."

And I take them off, thinking of all the little adventures my shoes have known today, envisioning them on the shelf of a secondhand store, how the next person who owns them will not know that they hold the energy of candy-pink guns, of Catherine Bennett and car crashes.

Bradley stumbles over to the shoe display and brings back a pair of ski boots from the shelf; they are wide and fat as marshmallows and my feet squish around in them. I have to admit they feel better than my platforms. He's changed out of his shoes too; he's wearing the Ziggy Stardust boots with his jeans tucked in.

He puts his hand down and helps me up. "And now we go," he says dramatically. I do not ask where we're going; I let Bradley lead me to the door. Bradley locks up the store with great effort, as if masterfully solving a Rubik's Cube. I look across the street and see three guys in army fatigues and berets getting out of a car in front of the liquor store. They're joking around-one guy using hand gestures to tell a story as his friends laugh. They don't look much older than me, so maybe they are nineteen-year-olds on leave from Iraq in search of alcoholic beverages. No matter, if they aren't twenty-one yet they'll have to rely on their uniforms or a decent fake ID to buy their beer.

"Ready?" Bradley puts out his hand and we take a few steps together. Even in my flat boots, I have to extend one hand for balance, as if I am surfing.

We are far too drunk to drive.

It seems like we should call a taxi, make a plan, but we both take off purposefully down the icy sidewalk, though we've nowhere to go. The cold air and the champagne have transformed my sadness to pure, crystalline melancholia, as if I could step in front of a city bus and feel no pain, only the inevitability of the day's second accident. And yet, the army guys offer up a little jolt of reality: Why have I a.s.sumed I can't go to Europe without my mother? Given that I could be off on some dangerous mission to Afghanistan or Iraq, would it really be such a burden to visit fas.h.i.+on capitals and coastal towns by myself?

It would be a little sad. That's all.

Bradley stumbles a bit on an icy patch, and when I put my arm out for him, we hold hands for a moment. He looks across the street at the liquor store and says, "Wait here."

I'm thinking that going off for more booze is not the hottest idea that Bradley has ever had, when he grabs two cardboard boxes from a heap in front of the liquor store. He quickly breaks them down into flat, slatted squares, my sweet recycler extraordinaire. He doesn't bother to look before he crosses the street, his head tucked against the cold winds.

When he hands me a square of cardboard I smile. "Thanks?" And then he takes my hand.

"Let's roll, Sandinista," Bradley says. And so we walk up Thirty-Eighth Street together, past the deserted brick building with chained, gated windows that look doleful and resigned, yet full of dignity: these buildings that have simply said f.u.c.k it and closed in on themselves. No wallflower hopes of urban renewal for these aged beauties, no weather-beaten, delusional real estate signs, AVAILABLE FOR LEASE OR SALE, PLEASE CALL ...

Please call. Pleasecallpleasecall.

Yes, I suppose I am paying attention.

Thirty-Eighth Street s.h.i.+nes icy and virginal against the streetlights. We are huffing and puffing, chugging up the sidewalk like the drunken smokers that we are, and my body starts to ache again: my lips, my forehead, my back, neck, and also that spot on my ribs, a pulsing pain on my ribs, though that bruise is fading. But when we reach the top of the street, when we're standing in front of St. Joseph's Monastery, looking down, it is the smallest victory, our breath fat and plumed. Bradley says, "Let's go." And I follow him through the side yard of the monastery, cardboard slapping at the packed snow.

Bright floodlights switch on, trapping us in a rhombus of golden light. Bradley looks handsome and electric and we freeze like startled, experimental lovers: Uh, what exactly are we doing?

I ask Bradley, "Will we be arrested for trespa.s.sing?"

"They'll definitely forgive us," Bradley says. We go scrambling out of the side yard, into the safe, snowy darkness at the back of the monastery. There is a steep hill that slopes dramatically with swirled untracked snow. Lit by the moon, it looks like white sand, and I see now what Bradley is after.

"Well, so ..." I a.s.sess the packed snow that rises into the brick wall of the monastery. I hold up my cardboard. "If we freak out and sled right into the brick wall ... that would be kind of bad news, yes?"

In profile Bradley lit by the winter moon is so beautiful-his breath a cold cloud that forms and re-forms-and the champagne still so awhirl in my brain that I lose my own monastic aesthetic and wish things could be different; I wish I could put my cold, hurt mouth on his. He looks over at me for a long, bizarre second, and maybe I'm drunkenly imagining it, but Bradley seems to be thinking the same thing. But then he flashes me a big, warm smile and ambles up the hill like a freaking billy goat. He sticks the cardboard under one arm, and wings his other arm out, elbow bent, and calls out, "Bawwk bawwk bawwk."

"Monsieur Maturity," I say. "And FYI? I am not a chicken."

"Sandinista, you so don't have to tell me that."

And so the odd moment is buried and I trek up the hill, stiff-kneed as Frankenstein's monster. The snow and the ink sky look like an indigo vintage dress so beautiful that I would wear it on my wedding day-and I'm entertaining many drunken thoughts about the juxtaposition of purity and darkness when Bradley calls down the hill to me, whisper-yelling so as not to wake the sleeping monks: "Get moving, girl. G.o.d! You're such a slowpoke!"

Inevitably I lose my balance and fall on the new snow that only looks like swirls of soft-serve ice cream; there is black ice beneath.

"f.u.c.k!" I say. And then of course I feel bad when I look at the snow-crowned stone saint in the corner, as if he is about to come to life-Frosty the Snowman with a Christ obsession-and run shrieking into the streets at my profanity.

And of course when I fell, my piece of cardboard, my "sled," went sailing down the hill with a gritty whoosh, off into the night. There's no way I'm going after it.

"You okay?" Bradley calls down the hill.

"Oh, I'm great," I mumble. "Fanf.u.c.kingtastic."

When I finally make it to the top of the incline, Bradley holds out his hand to me. "Here, my dear."

"You have a lot of good ideas," I tell him, taking his hand. "Such as monastery sledding in the dark."

"Oh, like you don't have any crazy ideas?"

We're silent for a moment, admiring the night.

"It's funny," I finally say, "how there's all this snow, some kind of Antarctica supreme, and yet it's not really that cold-it's brisk, more like spring."

"These are the halcyon days of global warming," Bradley agrees. "It's not like when we were little, standing at the bus stop with your lungs raspy from breathing in the freezing air, and your face feels frozen, like you can't take it for another second, and then the bus finally comes rolling down the street."

And I think it's not only global warming but that other thing too: that you lose your milk teeth and your perfect baby skin, that you lose your mother and you learn that you just have to take it, you have to feel it. There is nothing else.

Except for Bradley, who drops his cardboard on the snow and braces it with his Ziggy Stardust boot, a snow-kissed storm trooper, the hero of my own little winter wonderland.

"Looks like somebody's riding b.i.t.c.h," he says, employing a tough straight-guy accent, macho with earthy, redneck undertones.

Together we sit down on the cardboard, a scramble of legs and arms. Close to him now, I feel only the warmth of friends.h.i.+p, of family. And so we sit at the top of the monks' backyard for a second, at ease, our boots parallel to the cardboard, anchoring us to the snow.

We enjoy our aerial view of the city-Look! Look how pretty! The lit-up sign for the VFW hall, those retro flas.h.i.+ng consonants. Look at the top floor of the new circular condominiums lit up like a concrete layer cake, and look up there, at the single light that has switched on in the third floor of the monastery. I wonder: Is it a monk with a stomachache? Perhaps an insomniac flipping through his Bible or playing solitaire? Maybe just a random fellow pilgrim waking with the bad feeling of uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh.

"Look," Bradley says, but I'm already looking: a bearded monk has appeared at the window. Did he hear us? Could he sense us in the snowy darkness? He's not sporting his monk apparel, he's wearing a white T-s.h.i.+rt and could pa.s.s as anybody's grandpa about to raise the window to call out, "I see you crazy kids out there! You're going to break your G.o.dd.a.m.n necks sledding in the darkness."

But he doesn't. He raises his hands and places them, palms out on the window. He bows his head. And then he is gone, the light switched off.

Remember, the King of Kings will be there with you.

I put my hand into my pocket and pick out my wrinkly little Eucharist wafer. I bow my head and sneak it into my mouth. Without speaking, we-we! the sweetest of p.r.o.nouns-pull our feet off the snow at the same time and the sled takes off with a swoooosh, my arms around Bradley, Christ in my mouth and birds in my stomach as we fly into morning.

SUNDAY.