A forest of air fresheners hung from Verona’s car mirror.
Black Ice. Western Wind. It had only been a day, but the smell of piss was almost entirely gone. It helped that her seats were leather. It helped that she was more concerned about the earthquake than me ruining her car. No weird side-eye glances. No silent treatment. As I waited for her to get back from the ATM, my canvas portrait loomed at me from the rear-view.
It was broken, the painting. Something had fallen on it during the quake. The wooden frame had splintered in half across the top and a large gash cut through what was supposed to be my face. If it didn’t look like me before, it really didn’t now. A seatbelt secured it in place. For some reason, Verona had buckled that one in but left the rest of her paintings loose on the floor. She wanted to take them to some storage place downtown.
I twisted the mirror away, but it only framed more of the damage from last night. Outside, a large, cracked sign lay across the sidewalk, casting a wall of shade that some homeless man slept beneath. Welcome to Your New Home. The man’s dog nuzzled up behind him, keeping one eye open and trained on me. Flies bounced off its muzzle, unconcerned about the barred fangs and drool. I shrunk in my seat and clicked the radio on.
Jesus, man he comin’. I told ya’ there’d be earthquakes. That one last night went an knocked all my shit around. It was some call-in radio show I’d listened to a thousand times but couldn’t remember the name of. The clock said it was 3:32 PM and Verona was still around the corner pressing buttons into the cash machine. Lord help these sinners.
More flies collected around the broken sign, circling from the dog to the homeless man like tiny vultures. Was he even alive? A long crack had spiderwebbed across the glass door of some restaurant behind him. The sign said closed, and I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. Verona’s shadow stretched down the sidewalk as she headed back to the car.
Alright, next caller. The fake tree’s jostled as she opened her door to get in, but the faint stink of rotten asparagus wafted through anyway—despite the combined power of Western Wind and Cactus Flower. When was the last time I even had a vegetable? She stuffed the cash into one of the cup holders and looked over her shoulder to make sure my portrait was still buckled. That quake broke all my antique china. Generations of family history, gone.
“Why’d you need to get cash,” I asked. “Can’t you just use your Dad’s card?”
She adjusted her rear-view. “And give him the satisfaction of tracing my spending?” The car sputtered to life, and she shifted the gear into reverse. The homeless man outside actually moved, curling up closer to his dog, and the flies that had been surrounding them both shot up into the sky. “No. I prefer privacy.”
My painted reflection went back to staring at me as Verona pulled down the street. My beautiful dishes. The call-in on the radio cried like she had lost a pet. I’d do anything to go back in time and keep them safe. More signs and cheap billboards plastered the shops on the street. I never noticed how many there really were. Each one had been broken in a different way.
They found Nathan.
He had been buried beneath a slab of cement driveway in some new development that was being constructed. The earthquake had cracked the freshly paved concrete severely enough that the workers had to tear the whole thing up. That’s where they found the body. Bloated like wet sausage. At least, that’s what Jimmy told us.
“Totally disfigured,” he said, leaning forward in the metal cafe chair. “Like someone tried scoopin’ his brain out through his eye holes.”
I took another bite of my breakfast. Pork and Hash Scramble. The meat clung to the roof of my mouth, and I tried washing it down with my coffee, but it was still too hot.
“Were you at Mark’s party the other night?” I asked.
“What?” Jimmy asked as he picked the mark on his cheek. “No. I was with Clair.” His eyes darted over the food piled up on my plate.
“Wait,” Spit interrupted. “How do you know what Nathan looked like?”
The flatscreen TV, hanging in the corner of the cafe, flashed the local news at us. Some reporter with golden eyes flapped her mouth, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She pointed at a dirt-hole driveway behind her, secured with long yellow tape. Do Not Cross.
“I know someone who works for that construction company.” Jimmy shrugged. “He snapped a picture without tellin’ anyone, showed it to me.”
“Do you think it’s the new suppliers?” Spit covered his lips as he whispered this. His fingernails were overgrown, stretched out like talons. I blew the steam rising from my drink and watched the newscaster with golden eyes talk with her hands. The chunks of concrete scattered behind her looked like unmarked gravestones.
Jimmy shook his head. “Nathan was reckless as hell and talked way too much. There’s no telling who he pissed off.” He went to scratch his cheek again. His nails were just as long as Spits, grime packed into the crevices of his nail beds. “But, at least some of us don’t have to worry about these things anymore.” Jimmy looked towards me when he said this, but I was too busy staring at my own hand. The whites of my fingernails had been clipped away. I had even tried buffing the edges with some pink file I had found in Verona’s shower this morning.
Jimmy’s chair creaked as he leaned further forward. “Must be nice. You got your own bottomless bank account with that chick of yours. Freedom to do whatever you want. Freedom to forget about your real friends.”
Real friends? I didn’t even know Jimmy’s last name. The golden-eyed newscaster walked towards the broken driveway, and Jimmy was close enough to my face now that I could smell the last cigarette he had smoked.
“Real soulless, man,” he said. “But it’s always been like that, huh? Now I get why Nathan wanted to bust your face so bad.”
I chewed at the scar on my lip, and my hand even started to shake. Drops of coffee jumped from my cup and against my fingers. The news camera panned down into the empty dirt-hole driveway.
“Let me ask you this,” Jimmy continued. “Your little girlfriend, does she give you your allowance before or after she ass fucks you?”
I threw my coffee in his face. It washed over him in a wave that turned the mark on his cheek deeper purple. Steam wafted from his head as he pushed himself up and grabbed me by the shirt. I stumbled out of my chair, but his grip was too tight for me to get away. Jimmy was the kind of person who would mug someone else, not the other way around. Sharp chunks of exposed brick dug into my back. He had me pinned to the wall.
Dozens of eyes were trained on us. Every customer. The cafe had gotten so silent, I could actually hear the TV. The victim’s name hasn’t been released, but it seems he was a young, promising student here. Why anyone would want to hurt him is still a mystery.
The parts of Jimmy’s face that weren’t purple, shone bright red, like a kickball. He heaved his stale cigarette breath against my face and pressed his arm up against my throat until my own breathing stopped. Someone coughed. His eyes darted to the side, noticing the crowd he had around him, and he relaxed his arm enough for a small stream of fresh air to funnel back into my lungs. “You’re nothing, Kurt,” he whispered. “Nothing. Nobody. You hear?” The scab on his cheek shivered like a snake as he spoke.
He pushed himself off of me, and the balls of my feet pressed back into the floor. I looked to Spit for some sort of backup, but he was too busy staring at his shoes. What was I doing here? If you or someone you know has been the victim of violence, please contact the resource listed below. The newscaster continued to talk as I walked past Jimmy, towards the glowing, red Exit sign. Everyone’s eyes followed as I crossed through the cafe. And if you’ve seen anything strange, please—I walked out, slamming the door behind me.