“Come in when you’re done, sit down like a person and have some coffee.” She reached into the closet, straightened the mess he’d made. “Sneaking around the house in the middle of the night. You’re lucky Idon’t have a gun.”
“Old habits.” He smiled, and she rolled her eyes.
THREE WEEKS AFTER Manny’s funeral, Ray stood at the store’s counter, sorting through invoices. Michelle sat cross- legged on the floor in a storm of packing material and bright paper, her new laptop open. She had them selling books online. It more than doubled their income but meant shipping and tracking and dealing with people over the phone, which Ray left to her. He loved her openness to the new world but felt he couldn’t be much help and just admired the work from a distance. He told her they had gotten far out of his commercial comfort zone, which was sticking a gun in someone’s face and demanding money.
The shop was doing good, she said, and he trusted her to be right. He felt himself being drawn forward into life, and some days that was good and some days he’d pull back against it. He’d smell dope on Stevie and instead of giving him crap about it, he’d want to get high. Or a customer would get in his shit and he’d have to leave the store, drive around and listen to music and let the tide in his blood shift until he was drawn home again to find Michelle waiting for him, and when he tried to apologize or explain she’d shake her head and hold him and he’d believe in it again.
Theresa crouched in the back pawing the new romances before they went out onto the shelves, pulling each one to her face to squint at the covers, thumbing them open and mouthing a few words.
Michelle smiled. “Finding everything, Theresa?”
“I’m an old lady, hearts and flowers don’t do it for me. I like the ones where they get laid.”
Ray said, “ We should get you some little stars to put on the ones where they get their cookies. We won’t be able to keep them on the shelves. The little old ladies who come down from the shrine after mass’ll clean us out.” He looked outside, saw Andy launching herself up the stairs, one hand around her belly. She pushed through the door hard, the noise scaring Michelle, who ran to the front.
The girl was sobbing. “Has Lynch been here? Is he here?” Michelle put her arm around the girl, but she slid away to stand in the corner, her head swiveling. “Get him out here.”
“He’s not here, Andy.” Ray held up his hands. “What’s going on?” The girl was hugely pregnant now, her belly projecting over the small hand she kept on the waistband of the oversized jeans Michelle had helped her pick out. They had been trying to figure out her living situation, which seemed to be on- and off- again at home and occasionally in the basements of friends. They had even tried to get her into a cheap rental, but Lynch just waved them off and shrugged, and the girl volunteered nothing, though the bruises that occasionally appeared on her face made Michelle drop her eyes and shake her head.
They were standing there, Ray at the counter, Michelle hovering in the empty space between the door and the register, her arms outstretched as if Andy were a cat she was trying to coax off the windowsill, when Lynch ran up the street and into the store, Stevie a few steps behind him, the two of them out of breath.
The door banged on the wall, and Theresa got up and slapped the stack of books with an open hand. “Jesus Christ, can’t anyone open and close a door?”
Stevie bent over, wheezing, and hit his knees with his fist. Lynch put his arms around Andy, his back to the room, and she stood still and white. Ray could see the boy’s hands were shaking.
“What’s going on?” Ray looked from one to the other. Michelle touched Stevie’s arm and he jumped, his eyes moving wild in his head.
Theresa said, “Is it the baby? We need to call an ambulance?”
Stevie shook his head, pointed at his friend. “Man.”
Lynch turned, and they saw he was crying and there was a fine spray of blood across his eyes. Michelle sucked in a breath and stood up straight. They were all still for a moment. There were muted traffic sounds and a distant siren, and Andy, quiet now, turned to look at the street.
Lynch made a motion with his upper body, flexing his arms as if the sleeves of his thin jacket were too small. He smeared at his face with his hand, looked into his palm, but the blood had dried to rust. “I told that fucker. I told him he fucked with Andy again…”
Stevie spoke to the floor. “You told him. But man, Lynch.”
“No, I told him, he touched her again.”
Michelle pulled her arms around her as if she were cold. “You have to tell us what happened. Andy, what happened?”
The young girl moved closer to the window, breathed on it. She traced something no one else could see onto the window in the fine mist from her breath, watched it evaporate. Ray thought it might have been a heart.
Stevie said, “Andy’s old man was wailing on her again. He kicked her in the stomach.”
“Jesus.” Ray covered his face with his hands and spat out the words. “Jesus.”
He heard a rustling, and when he opened his eyes Lynch had produced a pistol from his oversized thrift store parka. It was comically large, a long barrel like something from a western.
Michelle said, “Bradley.” It was the boy’s first name, and Ray had never heard her say it out loud before. Lynch turned to her and his eyes were dull. “Honey, put that away.”
Ray came from around the counter. Theresa was standing, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. He moved deliberately, slowly, imagining each terrible way this could play out. He put himself in front of Michelle and backed up, moving her into the aisles and toward the rear of the store. Then he stepped forward, one arm extended.
Michelle’s eyes filled with tears and she grabbed at a bookshelf, her knuckles showing up white against her dark skin. She said, “Andrea, honey, come stand by me,” but her voice was strange, rounded and hoarse.
“Lynch, man, you are among friends.” He turned to Michelle, who reached past him and grabbed Stevie by the sleeve and pulled him and Theresa toward the back door. “Think, kid, you don’t want a gun around Andy or the baby.”
Lynch turned and looked at Andy, who sighed as if she were bored by an argument she had heard before and stared out at the street.
She said, “Lynch, we have to go.”
“We need money.” He lifted the pistol and pointed it at Ray, who put up his hands. Behind him he heard Michelle stifle a scream, clapping her hand over her mouth. He turned and smiled at her, or thought he did, watching through the rear window at Theresa stumbling across the parking lot toward the borough hall and the sign that said police.
“I know, man, you can have what ever you need, we just have to talk about what’s going to happen, and you need for Christ’s sake to put away the gun.”
The pistol went off then, always a different sound than Ray expected, not that resonant bang they dub into the movies but a concussive pop that slapped at his head and made his ears ring. The bullet cracked a display case behind him that showered glass onto the floor. Michelle jumped forward into the room, scuffling with Stevie, who was panting and trying to pull her back out to the parking lot.
Andy sighed again, and Lynch said, “I shot her old man. I told him and told him, but he was such a dumb- ass. You can’t keep beating on people. You can’t.”
Ray dropped his head. “Lynch.”
“Don’t fuck with us. Just give us some money and we’ll get out of here.”
“You don’t have to do this. Tell me what happened.”
“I just fucking told you.”
“No, I mean everything, everything, the whole story. He was hitting her, right?” Ray had only glimpses of their lives, Stevie and Lynch and Andrea. Drug abuse and alcoholism, suicide and abandonment and rage that chased the kids into the street to live in alleys and abandoned cars, camp in the woods, or cling to each other in wet sleeping bags in half- built houses and vanish into the forest like deer when the Mexican and Guatemalan construction crews came to work in the morning.