Armadillos Read online

  ‘Nothing today, Duke.’

  I scanned the empty booths in case Mr Dee was sitting in a darkened corner. Duke glanced up at me and a spark of interest flashed across his face as he took in my bandaged hand.

  ‘What you do there, sugar pie?’

  He played with his glass on the counter and examined his nails while he waited for my reply.

  ‘Uh, I ran into a bit of trouble.’

  He looked suddenly serious and turned his fake eyes on me. ‘Duke don’t like trouble, Aggie.’

  ‘Not serious. Just domestic shit. You know how it goes.’

  ‘Sure,’ he smiled and turned to refill his glass. ‘Duke knows how it goes.’

  ‘Could I get a coke?’ I asked, as I forced myself closer to him and hopped onto a bar stool. He bent down and got a can from the fridge behind him. He pinged back the ring and passed it over. I took a swallow and the bubbles made me burp. He grimaced.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I covered my mouth too late. He shook his head in disgust and went back to his book. I took a good look around the place. No one here but the two of us. ‘I gotta meet Mr Dee, Duke. You seen him? I don’t know what he looks like.’

  In the dingy half light of the bar, the intensity of his gaze almost pushed me off my seat.

  ‘Mr Dee, huh?’ he said, quietly. He laid his book face down on the counter. In tiny writing, sandwiched between the giant letters of the author’s name, was the book’s title: Sinners. I felt heat prickle my chest and redden my cheeks.

  ‘Tell me,’ he continued. ‘How’s Freak these days?’

  ‘She’s real sick,’ I lied. ‘That’s why I’m here. She sent me.’

  Duke laughed but not in a humorous way. ‘Did she? Interesting.’

  I crossed my arms over my chest. He wasn’t even trying to disguise it. His eyes were all over me. ‘Freak keeps real bad health, don’t she?’ he spat. ‘That’s more than once she’s let me down.’

  Saliva flew from his lips and found my face. Something had shifted and the air felt dangerous.

  ‘She just ate some bad chicken,’ I offered. ‘It aint serious.’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid it is serious.’ He moved along the bar towards me and my heart hit my boots. ‘Thing is, she’s overdue on a payment, Aggie. She’s been owing Mr Dee for some time now.’

  I took a few gulps of my coke, trying to get my thoughts in order. Freak hadn’t said anything about owing money. I’d been too sleepy to think of asking. I kicked myself for being so dumb.

  Duke leaned over the counter and I couldn’t help but see down his shirt. I had to admit his pecs were pretty good for a guy his age. He might have a fondness for dresses, but he obviously worked out. A carpet of white hair ran from his neck and disappeared down into darkness. I flicked my eyes away and kept them focused on my coke as the smell of cologne and alcohol floated over me. Evidently, the freshener hadn’t worked.

  ‘I don’t know anything about that, Duke. All she said was she had a meeting with Mr Dee today and she’s real apologetic about not making it.’

  ‘Because she’s sick,’ Duke said, drumming his blue nails on the counter. ‘And she’s sent you instead.’

  ‘Uh – yeah,’ I replied.

  He leaned in real close. A smattering of gray pores speckled the grease on his nose.

  ‘What she tell you about Mr Dee, Aggie?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I shrugged. Keep it casual, keep it easy. ‘Just he’s real important, I guess.’ I glanced up to see if I’d pleased him but I couldn’t read his face. Another burp threatened to burst out of me. I swallowed it down but it caught on my throat and made my eyes water. He ran his middle finger round and around the rim of my can, his wrist gently touching my hand.

  ‘Mr Dee,’ he murmured. ‘You want to see Mr Dee, yes?’ His fat tongue pushed between his lips, making them wet. His teeth were white, too white. He must have had them done. He grabbed my chin and pulled my face up so I had to look him in the eye. ‘Mr Dee is a very special friend of mine, Aggie. A very close friend. Would you be respectful if you met him, I wonder?’

  I let the can go and leaned back far as I could without toppling off the barstool.

  ‘I would, of course I would,’ I said.

  ‘Not like Freak. Freak just takes the money. That’s all she wants. It’s sad.’

  He moved round from behind the bar to stand beside me.

  ‘You’re tight with Freak, right?’

  The way he said that made me want to vomit. He was close enough now to be touching me, just lightly, not enough for me to complain about but enough for me to get the idea. I nodded, eyes fixed on the bottles behind the bar. So pretty, green, blue and purple.

  ‘You should tell her that Mr Dee is very unhappy. He wants paying. If she doesn’t pay, Mr Dee will take what’s his some other way. But maybe that’s what Freak wants him to do.’

  He slipped his hand onto my leg and down in between as he moved behind me.

  ‘Does Aggie understand?’ he breathed. The smell of him caught in my throat.

  He pulled me up by my waistband, forcing me over the bar, my feet only just balanced on the rung of the bar stool.

  Bottles, green, blue and purple.

  He reached over and pulled up my sleeve. With one hand still holding my waistband so I couldn’t move, he gently ran the back of his hand over the mess of scars on my arm.

  ‘You’re the same,’ he breathed.

  The bell on the door signalled someone arriving and he let me go. He stood back and stretched, letting out a huge, fake yawn. I jumped off the stool and put some space between us.

  A young woman came in, skinny with boobs and boots. Her stride faltered for a split second when she saw Duke and me.

  ‘You’re late, darling,’ he said. Her eyes met mine briefly, and she ducked her head as she clicked behind the bar and disappeared through the back. Duke resumed his position behind the bar and thwacked the counter with a dish cloth.

  ‘You have a special quality, Aggie. Duke likes that. You ever want a job, make sure you come to me first. Now scoot. And tell Freak I’m not happy.’

  I stumbled outside fast as I could. The sun made my eyes water. I walked fast, putting that place behind me, ripping the bandage off my wrist as I did. No need to let people know I had a weak spot. I pounded fifteen blocks before I got a straight thought in my head, and when it arrived it told me to pull my phone out. Business people filed out of the building beside me and gathered in the lot across the road. I didn’t care if they heard or not.

  ‘What the FUCK did you just send me into?’

  If she’d been standing in front of me I would have killed her. I hadn’t left my sub folks behind just to wind up sub for someone else. People bumped into me and I pressed the phone hard to my ear in order to hear. Sounded like she was crying.

  A fat guy in a gray shirt started moving me on. Fire drill. Jesus. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. I hung up. I tried to push my way through the hundreds of people pouring out the building but in the end it was easier to move with them. I waited for half an hour in amongst the normal folks and managed to bag four wallets in that time. And that was me being cautious. When they were allowed back in the building, I jumped a taxi home.

  I’d decided what to do. I’d head to the coast. No more stalling. If Marjorie was ready to go then good. If not, I’d go myself. I’d help myself to some of the secret cash Freak had put beneath the floorboards. Not all. Maybe half. I’d call it compensation for trauma brought on by Duke’s foul breath down my throat. Fuck him. Fuck her. I’d take all of it.

  I took the stairs two at a time. I had to speak to Marjorie first. I banged on her door and rattled the handle but she wasn’t in. I took the stairs again up to my room and spread all my shit out. Not much to show for a life. Jeans, boots, a few books belonging to Marjorie. A sleeping bag that had seen better days. A sleeping mat. Make-up. Good. I didn’t need to carry a shitload of crap around. I’d go light. Move fast. Do it myself. I’d done it before. Whe
re the fuck was Marjorie? I sat down and waited.

  Outside, the light was fading. There was a knock on my door. I watched it swing open to reveal Freak, mascara staining her cheeks, nose like Rudolph. Just looking at her made me tired.

  ‘Why you knocking?’ I said. ‘It’s your room, too.’

  She came in, sliding along the wall like a human slug, snot running over her lips. She wiped her face with her sleeve and sat down on the floor beside me.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask what’s wrong?’

  ‘I know what’s wrong, Freak. Don’t have to fucking ask what’s wrong. What’s wrong is sending me to that fucking creep without a word of warning.’

  ‘Did you tell him I was sick?’

  ‘Yes, I fucking told him!’ I grabbed her collar and pushed her down so I was sitting on top of her, yelling in her face. ‘I fucking told him you were sick right before he tried to have sex with me!’

  ‘Big fucking deal. He tries to have sex with everybody. Don’t mean you’re special.’

  I smelled it again, that alcoholic smell, the cologne, saw the bottles green, blue and purple, and then I looked at her, face all swollen from tears, so uncaring about anyone but herself. She wriggled about beneath me but I had her shoulders good and tight and I shook her.

  ‘Bitch. Fucking bitch,’ I said, over and over. ‘Sending me into that. Sending your friend to a fucking rapist. A fucking rapist!’

  Her mouth curled into a sly half-smile. ‘Says the girl who left her own sister with two of the fuckers.’

  I slapped her with so much force it hurt my hand. I remembered I’d only taken the bandage off today and then the thought was gone. I took a fistful of hair and banged her head off the floor. Once, twice, but it wasn’t her face I saw when I looked down, it was a stranger’s face, still female, but brown hair instead of pink, not Jojo but maybe Jojo. I stopped to look properly and it was Freak after all, her eyes empty, unseeing, not even feeling what I was doing. I climbed off her in disgust, with her, with myself, with everything. I spat on her stomach for good measure. She curled herself into a ball and cried.

  ‘Duke says to tell you Mr Dee wants his money,’ I said over the noise of her tears. If she heard me she didn’t let on. I didn’t even care.

  In the morning, Freak and me were still laying there. I’d intended to listen out for Marjorie or Ade coming back through the night, but somehow I’d fallen asleep to the sound of her crying.

  ‘Kitty cat Aggie,’ said Freak. ‘You still mew in your sleep.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m sorry for what I said.’

  I wasn’t ready to forgive and forget, which is what she was angling for. At the same time, I didn’t want to dwell on her last words to me. I tried to push all thoughts of Jojo out my head by counting the cracks in the ceiling. Since I’d been there, they’d multiplied. Ninety-seven cracks, all spread out like a spiderweb, not fit for holding anything much less two fighting humans – sub or otherwise. The huge crack running down the wall now travelled along the baseboard and round the corner to the next wall.

  ‘This place is shit,’ I said.

  Freak sat up and looked at me, as though an idea had just occurred to her. ‘Why don’t we just split?’

  ‘What?’

  This was a turn around.

  ‘Serious. This place blows. Austin, that’s the place to be.’

  ‘Freak, every place is the same for girls like you and me. Wherever we go, we’ll end up doing the same shit. Wherever we go…’ I couldn’t finish my sentence. For the first time, I understood that wherever we went there would always be a guy like Duke waiting to catch girls like us. Wherever we went it was a one-way trip down the same road. Whether she got my point or not, she didn’t say anything more about it.

  We went downstairs for breakfast. The cupboards were pretty bare. Tawanna had started hoarding food in her room on account of night-time feeding frenzies, despite the baby being barely more than a bump. She was packing on the pounds and drawing looks from Virginia.

  ‘Jesus, is this all there is?’ Freak held a box of Cheerios, which we knew belonged to Monty because he was a big Cheerios fiend. We decided, as he hadn’t put a label on, that technically they belonged to everyone. We ate them dry from the box and sat in the empty kitchen looking out at the garden, all burned up yellow and blistered in the heat. Nothing stayed green at this time of year.

  ‘So what was the problem?’ I finally asked.

  ‘What problem when?’ Freak said, shoving a fistful of Cheerios in her mouth. Some fell out her hands and down the side of her chin to the floor.

  ‘Last night. You were upset about something.’

  ‘Yeah, Aggie. You beating the shit out of me.’

  ‘Before that. You said something was wrong but I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘Oh, that. Nothing.’ She took another handful of cereal, dropping more on the floor.

  ‘Who’s going to pick that up?’ I said, but she just kept looking out the window and chewing.

  ‘How was your date?’ I figured the problem had to do with Ade. He’d been her whole world for weeks. She shrugged.

  ‘Fine,’ she said.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Not a lot. Took me to the JFK museum. Introduced me to one of his friends. Some guy named Rand. Then they went off and talked a bit and I just… hung around.’

  ‘Romantic,’ I said. ‘And the… investigation? How’s that going?’

  ‘Uh. I’m not sure. He… uh… I’m not sure.’

  She made a deep sigh and her body kind of slumped. Her open hand rested on the counter with Cheerios still in it.

  ‘You can tell me, you know,’ I said, taking some cereal from her hand. ‘I’m not going to tell him.’

  She threw a quick look at me. ‘I know you’re not. It’s not that. It’s just… he… Oh fuck, I don’t know.’ She put the Cheerios down on the counter and laid her head on her forearms. I noticed a dark spot coming through her sleeve.

  ‘He… he kinda flipped out a little,’ she said, after a while.

  ‘What kinda flipped out? Did he hurt you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. More like… he’s gone a bit weird. Like, won’t talk to me now. He thinks… he thinks…’

  ‘Jesus, Freak. What does he think?’

  She rolled her eyes and laughed nervously.

  ‘He thinks people are spying on him,’ she said, at last. ‘Like the FBI and stuff. Because of the investigation.’

  I almost choked on my cereal. ‘Be serious?’

  ‘I am serious. It aint funny though, Aggie. It’s kinda scary. He cut his dreads off.’

  ‘That aint no bad thing. White guy with dreads? Gross. No offense.’

  ‘He cut them off, because he thought there were microphones in his hair.’

  ‘Oh. Fuck,’ I said. ‘Shit.’

  ‘There’s more,’ she said, her face burning. She kicked the baseboard. ‘Christ, I’m so stupid sometimes. I fucking gave him my money.’

  ‘What? All of it?’

  ‘Near enough a thousand bucks, Aggie.’

  My eyes must have grown the size of planets. She shrugged. ‘He said it was for lawyers to fight for the house.’

  ‘That sounds like a good reason,’ I said, relieved.

  ‘But instead, he gave it to this guy in exchange for a bunch of papers and shit. Shit to do with JFK. That’s the real reason we went into town yesterday.’

  She looked real sheepish, and in the middle of the awfulness, I was happy to find my sympathy for her was coming back.

  ‘But that aint all, Aggie. Shit, no. That aint all.’ The way she said it made me pay attention, though somewhere in the back of my mind I had an idea of what was coming. A sick feeling started way down deep in my stomach. If I looked at her, I’d kill her. I organized the loose Cheerios into a tidy pile and began to crush each one with my thumb. A sharp crumb slipped under my nail and pricked the skin.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, shoving my thum
b in my mouth.

  ‘Strictly speaking…’ Freak continued.

  ‘I need a band-aid.’

  ‘… strictly speaking, the money wasn’t mine to give away.’

  The blood arched its way in a thin line beneath my nail, and dripped onto the tiny mountain I’d made.

  ‘And I’m sorry I sent you there, Aggie,’ she was saying. ‘I should have told you how bad he was from the beginning.’

  21

  We planned for Ade to return the stuff and get the cash back, but when he rolled in later with Marjorie, it was clear he’d be useless. I’d always had him down as spineless but now he could barely stand upright. He kept his arms wrapped around himself and only moved when Marjorie told him to. She made him sit in the backyard while she tidied his hair up with clippers. Black clumps rolled through the empty vegetable patch. I hoped a bird would gather them for a nest, because I sure as hell I didn’t want human content in my compost.

  Me and Freak watched as Marjorie did her work, murmuring to Ade the whole time. When she finished with him, he almost looked normal.

  ‘Time to lay down, Ade,’ Marjorie said. ‘Get some rest.’

  ‘Hey Freak,’ he said, with a goofy type of smile, as Marjorie led him out. Freak just nodded, confused as I was about what we were dealing with here. I expected Freak to be annoyed that Marjorie was playing mother instead of her, but whatever had gone down between her and Ade had left her pretty shook up. When Marjorie came back down, she found us waiting for her.

  ‘How is he?’ asked Freak.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said. ‘We’re gonna talk.’

  That’s when Marjorie told us that she and Ade once had a thing going on. Of course, we knew that. What we didn’t know was it had only finished when she noticed he couldn’t handle his joint. It made him paranoid. Made him think strange thoughts. Ade had always had the JFK thing going on since Marjorie knew him, but when FBI agents started to spy on him because he was close to a big breakthrough, Marjorie had said maybe he should take a step back. He’d split up with her when she’d stopped his weed supply.

  ‘And then you showed up,’ Marjorie said to Freak. I’d seen Marjorie angry plenty of times, but not angry like this cold, quiet anger. ‘I told you to keep away from him, didn’t I?’