lost my friends, too! I lost everyone in my unit! You’re asking me why?” The old man loomed, sweating. “Do you still keep track of everyone you once knew? Everyone you loved? Your favorite teacher? How about your first girlfriend?”
“No, sir.”
“No! Sir! She’s gone, or dead, and you don’t know ‘why’ either! Huh!” Standing in profile, Jackson downed his tea, his throat chugging. Isaac held his own scalding cup in his shaking hand, wondering how the man could drink it like that without burning his throat.
He and Kate jumped again when Jackson slammed his empty cup down on the coffee table. A ceramic chip flew into the wall. Jackson pointed a crooked finger at Isaac’s face. “You find Nina? Send her to me. I mean it. Or I’ll find you.” Jackson gave Kate a look Isaac didn’t understand, and then stomped to the back of the house.
To hide his shaking lips, Isaac sipped the bitter tea.
After a minute, Kate whispered, “Is he coming back?”
After another minute, Isaac called out, “Mr., um, Jackson?” and then, “Sir?” He waited one second, two, before snatching the postcard and photograph from the coffee table.
Kate stared at the half-eaten rice cake on the table, picked it up, and put it in her pocket. She whispered toward the open door, “Thank you for the…thing.”
They crept out.
As they drove away, Kate said, “You blew it.”
Chapter Five: The Theft
James “Quick” Tillis was the first heavyweight boxer to last ten rounds with world champion Mike Tyson. When Quick took a Greyhound bus to Chicago to begin his fighting career, he was just a young cowboy from Tulsa. He disembarked from the bus in front of the Sears Tower, a cardboard suitcase under each arm. He dropped them, looked up at the skyscraper and shouted, “I’m going to conquer Chicago!”
When he looked down, his bags were gone.
~
Nina made some of her best money at happy hour, especially in the bars near the Financial District. It was like stepping into a different era, one where people still wore shoulder pads and thought the Republican Party was moral. Filled with bankers and lawyers too scared to go home to their frigid, mean wives or empty apartments, the preppy bars were rife with opportunity—plus they always had fancy french fries. Parking was a bitch around commuter time, though, and her Pinto was starting to make a clacking noise the radio couldn’t mask, so Nina caught a bus.
Colfax Avenue is the longest continuous city street in America, and back when Nina had nowhere to sleep, she took the Colfax bus back and forth, dozing just short of REM. She had gotten to know the regulars—commuters, prostitutes, other homeless people. A man with bloodshot eyes and gray skin sometimes sat in the back, reciting the entire story of his life in relentless detail: how he lost his toes to frostbite while ranching outside of Gunnison; how he gutted salmon in Juneau until he cut off his index finger. Piece by piece, she heard about broken and lost limbs. She got occasional reruns, but she saved enough money for an apartment before she heard the whole story.
Nina didn’t fear other people anymore, but she feared that kind of poverty. It also made her sentimental. Life was simple when all she had was one duffel bag in a train station locker, when her armpits smelled of powdered hand soap and brown paper towels. She didn’t want to be hungry again, but she wanted to feel the lightness hunger brings. She didn’t ever want to be poor again, but she did want to hear the rest of the homeless man’s story.
The bus spit her out on Tremont and pulled away, vomiting exhaust. The street’s heat radiated through the thin soles of her shoes.
She stopped in front of a chrome bar called Nemo’s. Muffled noises leaked from inside—nasty laughs, tinkling barware. The windows showcased shadows of men with dark suits and loosened ties. A dirty boy in dreadlocks squatted next to the door.
“Aren’t you out of your neighborhood?” Nina asked him.
“Working.” He scanned her outfit and lit a hand-rolled cigarette. “Like you.” Crouching, his weight was on his toes. It would be easy to kick him onto his back.
She pulled out a cigarette and said, “Got a light?”
“I am the light. Baby, what you need is fire.” He clicked a purple Zippo and she leaned in. “So, chica, for a donation, I’ll create an original poem just for you.”
Lucky, Nina thought. She pulled a crumpled dollar from her pocket and dropped it into his hand. The boy looked at the dollar and recited, “Cheap chick gave me a buck. Fuck.”
Unlucky. She tried to snatch the dollar back, but his fingers closed over it. She kicked him onto his back, dropped her cigarette on him, and went inside.
Inside the bar, it was a sausage fest. Eyes lit on her from the neck down, and dotted away. A poppy-faced happy drunk kept smiling at everyone, his suit riding up in front. Another man with skidding eyes ordered another tequila. He stared down the shot like it was an opponent before swallowing it neatly, wiping his lips with a napkin that never left his hand. He had frayed cuffs, though, and Nina’s rent was due.
One guy at the bar, though—perfect. He wore a platinum Rolex with a pale blue watch face, which he flashed with a quick arm-jerk before asking his friend, “What time is it? Party time.” His shirt was tailored, and a bloated diamond ring swung on a chain around his neck, as mesmerizing as a pendulum. Nina wanted it.
Rolex man tipped the bartender twenty dollars for his dirty martini, pinching the bill on either side and tugging it tight before laying it flat on the bar. Nina thought, I’d better get things started before he blows all his cash. “Are you using this chair?” she asked.
Rolex’s friend leaned over. “No, ma’am, it’s using us.”
Nina flashed the friend a brief smile and sat next to Rolex, whose back was turned to her. He swiveled her direction partway and raised his voice so she could hear him over the bar noise. “…I told him, ‘Don’t sell the yacht. You might need it someday. With all those earthquakes, California’s going to break off the continent and the Pacific Ocean will wash onto your doorstep.’ That’s why I still have my little baby.” He glanced at Nina. “Not that it’s little. It’s big. Very big.”
“California isn’t next to Colorado. It’s next to Nevada.” The friend glanced at Nina. “Where’s Rhonda today?”
“Dumped her.” Rolex guy fingered his necklace. “You know why I wear this diamond ring around my neck?” He turned his face so Nina could view his profile.
“Yep,” his friend said.
“I wear it to honor the love of my life.”
“I know.”
“It was right after college, ten years ago. I got a job working at my dad’s stock brokerage firm, making obscene money. Nothing like what I make now, of course.”
The friend’s smile drooped as he glanced at Nina, sensing that he had already lost the girl to the schmuck, as usual.
Rolex raised his voice. “I was twenty-two, and in love with
