Richmond Noir

The Rose Red Vial by Pir Rothenberg

Museum District

When I got inside I called her name. My house was dark and quiet, and although nothing appeared altered I felt that something had happened since I’d left for the museum’s summer gala. There was a note on the kitchen table. I scanned it and it made no sense. I stuffed it into my pocket, took back a shot of whiskey, and walked the narrow hallway into the living room. I thought of the note; the words were going to make sense in a moment. I was sure of it, and felt so much like a balloon steadily expanding that I held my breath and winced at the inevitable explosion.

One month prior, in a storage room below the Virginia Historical Society, I sat before an empty glass cabinet preparing the lamps I would mount on the shelves. There were to be six items of Edgar Allan Poe memorabilia here, among them a lock of dark hair taken off the poet’s head after his death; the key to the trunk that accompanied Poe to Baltimore, where he spent the final few days of his life; and a walking stick, which Poe left here in Richmond ten days before his death. The items were on loan from the Poe Museum across town for the city’s celebration of the poet’s bicentennial, as yet seven months away.

I took a pull from the small metal flask I kept in my utility belt. When I noticed I wasn’t alone, it was too late to hide it. It was the new intern, a dark-haired girl with a small scar across her lower lip.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” I said, and took another swig before recapping the flask.

She’d started at the museum on Monday, but I’d seen her the weekend before in my neighbors’ backyard. The Hamlins had installed a six-foot privacy fence years ago, but by the unobstructed view from an upstairs window I’d watched the young woman standing like the very portrait of boredom, hand on the flare of her hip, as Barb Hamlin pointed out the trained wisteria and the touch-me-nots in her garden. She’d had one leg stretched into a band of sunlight when she glanced up and noticed me.

I went back to work on the lamps. “They give you something to do in here?”

“Rebecca,” she said, strolling through the makeshift aisles of cases and boxes. Her dark hair fell in angles around her face and she wore a white summer dress unsuitable for an intern’s duties. “And I wish they would. This room is why I’m here.”

“Poe fan, huh?”

“You too,” she said. “Or so Uncle Lou tells me.”

I chuckled softly but did not look up. I was well acquainted with “Uncle Lou,” former captain of the Third Precinct, famous for his supposed paternal brand of policing. Really, he’d never been more than a squat old tyrant. We’d been neighbors for a decade and the only thing that kept our peace was that six-foot fence. Now I was humbled to learn that “Uncle” was not a total misnomer; Lou, who’d sired no offspring, had a pretty young niece from Cincinnati.

“Maybe you could ask them to give me an assignment back here,” Rebecca said.

I told her I was just a lighting technician, contracted, not even staff.

“But you know John,” she said. John was the head curator. “You two are friends.”

I thought she ought to ask Lou, a patron of the museum whose connections had likely procured her the internship in the first place. But I agreed to put in a word, if only to end the conversation: nothing good could come from associating with Hamlin kin — much less from upsetting one with a refusal. Yet it excited me too, the thought of Lou’s scowling displeasure were he to discover Rebecca and I chumming around at the museum. Displeasure was a euphemism; he’d put his wife’s garden shears through my skull.

Still, when she asked for a drink, I handed her the flask.

At sunset she was at my front door. I glanced toward Lou and Barb’s house. Rebecca told me not to worry, they’d gone to play bridge with friends.

“So,” she said, wandering into my living room, “do you have any first editions?”

“What?”

“Of Poe,” she said.

“Did your uncle tell you that too?”

Glancing into corners, trailing her fingers along window-sills, she smiled. “I was hoping that a Poe aficionado — who works in a museum, no less — would have an artifact lying around.”

“What,” I said, “just lying around like junk mail?”

“Don’t be nasty,” she said, then picked up a green glass ashtray. “Like this,” she said, holding it to the light. “It’d be great if you could say, ‘And this is Poe’s ashtray, recovered from his writing desk at his last residence at Fordham.'”

“That was my grandfather’s.”

She set it down. “Lou would like that. History buff.”

Yeah, I thought. He had a hard time letting go of it.

“All sorts of Civil War memorabilia everywhere. Ever been inside?”

This was beginning to feel like a game. “What do you think?”

“How should I know where you’ve been?”

I told her she’d better not let Lou see us together.

“Together?” she said, hiding a smile.

“You know what I mean.”

“Why, doesn’t he like you?”

Now I just sat back and looked at her

“Oh, I know,” she said, grinning. “He told me to stay away from you.”

Then she asked for a drink, even though, by the way she’d cringed earlier, I could tell she’d hated it. I was disappointed. She was only there with me for a little rebellion against the stuffy uncle and aunt.

So be it. I went to get the whiskey.

I spoke with John. I owed my job at the VHS — my very livelihood in this city — solely to him. By the end of the week Rebecca was putting in shifts assisting me in preparing the illumination of over 1,500 objects for the bicentennial exhibits. John and the staff unpacked items every day and created layout plans. It was my job to determine how best to light those books, paintings, and curios they wanted in cases, mounted upon walls, or perched on podiums. Rebecca was happy the hour or two a day she worked with me — rather, with the objects, to which her full attention was devoted. She was ecstatic watching the items emerge from their boxes, or gazing into the cases once the lighting was complete, all the pieces illuminated perfectly before they went back into their boxes for safekeeping. The lights from the displays would strike her face full on, or under her chin like a flashlight beam, or sidelong as in a Rembrandt painting. I wanted to pose her and arrange the light so as to expose every molecule of her simple beauty.

On my back, my head inside a case, I heard Rebecca gasp.

“Wow,” she called, “have you seen this?”

When I stood up Rebecca was crouched by a case that John and I’d worked on that morning and had yet to finalize. She moved aside and looked at me, leaving one finger pressed to the glass.

“The perfume?” I said.

It was a small red vial, chipped along the lip — like Rebecca, with that nick running the width of her own. The original cork stopper, disintegrated long ago, had been replaced by a plastic facsimile.

Rebecca read from the placard: “The essence of rose, believed given by Poe to Virginia the year of their marriage, 1836.” She looked to me again, this time with a lusty sort of gaze. “Can you open the case?”

Although I was technically disallowed, as I was not a member of staff, I did have a key. John gave it to me for the sake of convenience — and because he trusted me. But I couldn’t shake her eyes and thought, What the hell, the museum had better let her touch anything she wanted if they liked her uncle’s money. I opened the case, then cradled the vial in my palms.

“If this breaks,” I told her solemnly, “that’s it. The end of us both.”

I felt her warm fingers coax the vial free from my hold, and noted the light that shone from the case upon her thin nose and lean cheeks, a cool, sterile light that was all wrong. Then, with a move of her thumb, off came the stopper and my heart kicked like a horse.

“Rose,” she said ecstatically, the vial beneath her nose.

I took a whiff. “Yup — now be care—”

She flipped the vial over upon her finger, then dragged the scent across her neck desperately, back and forth. I paled, took the bottle as forcefully as I dared, replaced the stopper, and put it away. She was grinning, her fingers down her dress top.

“Jesus, Rebecca!”

“Emery,” she said softly, almost pityingly, “you knew I was going to do that.”

I heard her call me in the parking lot behind the Historical Society. I didn’t stop, but slowed. We walked together into a long, thin park of magnolia trees that bordered Sheppard Street. The humidity was palpable and a damp wind was gathering strength. I turned into an alley and Rebecca followed, eyeing the flask when I took it from my belt.

“You don’t even like it,” I snapped.

The evening light on her face reminded me of the light that shines upon generals or angels in classic paintings: the exultant yellows and oranges bleeding through churning clouds. I reminded her how quickly I’d be fired if anyone discovered what had happened, then plopped the flask into her hand.

To avoid being seen together, we stuck to the alleys, hopping over streets — Stuart, Patterson, Park — and cutting through the neighborhood diagonally. Below our feet the cobblestones were mashed together like crooked teeth, and on either side crowded slim garages, wooden fences, bushes and woody shrubs, and walls of ancient brick. Green plumes of foliage, heavy with flowers and fruit, alive with the frenetic song of mockingbirds, spilled over everything like lush curtains; and the ivy-draped limbs of mammoth tulip trees wound intricately overhead like the soft arms of giants. It awed me how wild and vivacious the wilderness could be on these nameless roads. It was hard to imagine that a city existed beyond the houses we walked behind.

“Here once, through an alley Titanic,” intoned Rebecca, “Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul — Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.”

She watched me for a reaction.

“That’s Poe,” she said, as if to a very slow child.

The trees were loud in the wind and I caught the distinct scent of rose.

“You’ve got to wash it off as soon as you get home.”

“No one’s going to know, Emery.”

I glowered at her. A large, bulbous rain began to fall and rattle the magnolia leaves.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think it was that big a deal. I’ll wash it off tonight.” Then she threw her arm around my neck and pulled me down to her. “But just smell. Isn’t it nice?”

I tensed, restrained for a moment, then drew in the scents — the deep rose, the sticky warm skin of her neck, the rain — and shivered. She leapt away and screamed with delight at the storm, and ran the length of the alley for her house. I didn’t hurry. When I reached my back gate, I saw the blurry shape of Lou in his kitchen window, looking out.

That night I dreamed Rebecca was breaking into my house through a loose window. It was dark but there was a spotlight on her and she was naked. I spent the following morning distracted, preparing for work and wanting to see Rebecca. Wanting to see her in a particular light.

On my way to the museum, I found Lou in the alley breaking fallen tree branches for the trash. He was a stout, wiry man, white-haired and mustachioed, with a thick, soggy cigar between his teeth and sweet blue smoke clinging to his face. He cracked a limb under his knee and I imagined my bones making a similar sound. I felt sure that he’d seen me in the alley the previous night, that he already suspected something. But he said nothing, and did nothing more than nod curtly.

At the museum Rebecca and another intern were sanding walls in an empty exhibit room. When our paths crossed — Rebecca sweaty, covered in white dust, looking unhappy — I smelled the rose perfume. I eyed her, but said nothing. Lou’s lack of reaction had me on guard, probably more so than if he’d clocked me. That, at least, would’ve been in character.

Once alone, I asked if she’d showered, and caught the image of her slick body in steam.

She played indignant, then laughed. “Maybe it’s my natural scent.”

I smelled rose the next day too. It lingered in the replica wood cabin where she’d worked. I followed it through the Story of Virginia exhibit, down thousands of years of history, from the Early Hunters of 14,000 BC to the Powhatan Indians to the Belmont Street Car. Was it a game? Had she bought some cheap spray from the drugstore to irk me? But the odor of an imitation would be like a candy apple compared to the earthy fruit I’d smelled upon her in the rain. I went into the storage room. I found the box where the perfume had been repacked, but it wasn’t inside. Even its placard had vanished. I took a swig from my flask and found that I wasn’t much surprised.

On Saturday evening Rebecca knocked on my door. She’d told her uncle she would be at Trina’s, an intern she ate lunch with sometimes.

“What will you and Trina do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Paint our nails. Talk about boys.”

“Try on perfume?”

She spun around, swore the stuff simply hadn’t washed off, that she had on a different perfume, that I was imagining things. I hadn’t alerted John about the theft because I needed to get the perfume back myself. As much as I wanted to know how she’d done it, I’d already decided confronting her would get me nowhere. But now she was blinking. Big-eyed, disarming blinks. It infuriated me, this show of innocence while the scent of rose was so potent my eyes were practically watering.

“Perfumed from an unseen censer,” she said, raising a brow.

“Poe,” I said. “I know.” Then I took her arm and pulled her up the stairs. She played nonchalant but I could feel her legs resisting. I moved her into the bathroom and sat her on the edge of the bathtub.

“What the hell are you doing?” she said.

I turned on the hot water in the sink and lathered a washcloth with soap. If she was having so much trouble ridding her neck of the scent, I told her, I was going to help. Rebecca’s angry eyes grew challenging, playful. I kneeled, brought the cloth to her skin, and started scrubbing.

“That’s hot,” she said, but she acquiesced, tilting her head.

I wrung the washcloth, soaped it again, and resumed on the other side, taking hold of the back of her neck to steady her. This was a task, this was work — or so I told myself as I watched the soapy rivulets streak her skin. I felt her gaze on me, cool and calm now, and I didn’t look up before kissing her. I tasted rose and chalky soap, and saw red behind my eyelids, pulsing in time with my chest.

Rebecca was curled on one end of the couch and asleep. The whiskey had knocked her out. I put a blanket over her and sat on the opposite end, staring into shadows. A breeze moved my hair and disturbed Rebecca’s purse. I saw her keys in the purse. I took them, went barefoot into the Hamlins’ yard, and let myself in.

I did this all as though in one unthinking movement, and only when I heard snoring did I note my own thrashing heart. For Lou, shooting intruders was dinner conversation. I found Rebecca’s bedroom. Clothing was scattered in piles, and the tangled covers upon her bed made a fossilized impression of her body. On a dresser I fingered through a few trinkets, some cash and letters, then opened the top drawer. Here I found the girl’s undergarments, which, perhaps for posterity, were the only items she’d stowed out of sight. I ran my hands through the silky contents, inhaled the scent of fabric soap and rose. Feeling into the corners I came upon a small, smooth object: the red vial with the chipped lip. I crept out of the house, flooded with excitement and pleasure.

That was Saturday; I didn’t see Rebecca again until Monday afternoon, when I came in for a half-day shift. She was reading a magazine in the break room, a mug of tea below her chin.

“Rose hips?” I said, a sparkle in my voice.

“Chamomile.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It doesn’t smell like rose.”

She gave a small smile but didn’t look up. I left and headed toward the storage room. The glass vial bulged in my pocket. When I arrived, the door was already open and John was inside with several other staff members. They were unpacking boxes. The room was a disaster.

“Ah,” John said. “Just the fellow I was waiting for.”

My stomach dropped. John explained: he’d been working in storage with Rebecca that morning when she noticed a loose placard; when they tried to return it to the item it described — a red perfume bottle, of course — they discovered it missing. Did I remember it? Did I know anything about it? I made a series of noncommittal noises, difficult as it was to think straight, much less be clever. Rebecca’s little smile danced vividly to mind.

“We’re ass-deep in here the rest of the day making sure it’s really missing, not just misplaced.” I offered to help; I could produce the vial from the first box I unpacked and voila! Case closed. But John refused. Staff only for now. “You know,” he said, “to avoid any confusion.”

“Why would you do that?” I said, nearly shouting.

“Why would you creep into my room and steal it?”

I scoffed. “You’re accusing me of stealing!”

We stood facing each other under the magnolias. Rebecca stared off petulantly.

I took a few long breaths. “Do you want to know why ‘Uncle Lou’ doesn’t like me?”

Rebecca’s lips parted as if to speak, but she said nothing. She wanted to see what I’d say first, the crafty girl. I didn’t care at that point, so I told her.

“He thinks I stole a painting.” I laughed. “From a museum, no less.”

“Francis Keeling Valentine Allan,” Rebecca replied. “The portrait by Thomas Sully. Stolen in 2000 from the Valentine Museum. I know.”

I watched her fixedly. By the end of this revelation, her eyes had drifted down the row of magnolias, her gaze light and airy.

She continued: “Poe said she loved him like her own child. It’s a beautiful painting too, not that I’ve seen it in person.”

“Did Lou also happen to tell you he and a squadron of police burst through my door and tore apart my house eight years ago? That if it wasn’t for John choosing to trust me I’d have been blacklisted from working in any museum in this city again?”

Rebecca returned my stare; she looked ready to play rough. “He told me he saw you with a painting — covered by a sheet. He saw it in your hands the night of the burglary. You were trying to get it from your car to your back door. He saw you, Emery.”

I shook my head and laughed. “So, you’re Lou’s little spy? Looking for lost treasure?”

“Lou is a horse’s ass,” she said. “Anyway, would I find it?”

“It was a storm window, for Christ’s sake. Kid put a baseball through the old one a few days before. Once the cops were done demolishing my house, they were kind enough to look into it. Your uncle hates me because he made a fool of himself at the end of his career. He went out a laughingstock.”

Rebecca shrugged. “He thinks you have it. Still.”

“Do you think I have it?”

“You have my perfume,” she said. “And I want it back.”

Rebecca avoided me the next few days, which was fine, as the restrictions placed upon the non-staff made my job difficult enough. Gone was my key to the storage rooms and cases; gone the days I could work without staff watching over my shoulder. Rebecca had sealed her own fate too; she was back sanding walls all day. John hadn’t ruled it theft, but neither did he believe the missing perfume an inventory list blunder. He simply called it “Missing.” I could feel the growing weight in his eyes when he looked at me.

Lou found out about the perfume through his museum connections. That’s what Rebecca told me a week later, when she appeared at my door again. She’d heard Lou speaking of it on the phone, invoking my name more than once to John and others she didn’t know. I listened to her, weighing the veracity of what she said. I doubted Rebecca would tell Lou or John about my having the perfume; she wanted it for herself, and ratting me out wouldn’t accomplish that. No, given the opportunity, she would steal back the perfume. Probably it was the only reason she was here now. I told her as much.

“I won’t have to resort to that,” she said, stepping close. “I think you’ll give it back.”

“Why, because John and your uncle are hot on my heels?” I said, cockily.

She considered it. “Maybe because you like me?”

I watched her eyes for sarcasm, but she closed them and burrowed her face into my neck, running me through with chills.

“And because I like you,” she added.

One thing nagged me: if Lou had spoken with John and learned of the perfume, wasn’t it likely he’d also heard of Rebecca working with me in the storage room? Uncle Lou knew plenty of the staff — hadn’t anyone put his niece with me? We were careful, but there’s only so much one can do. It’s a small city. By Rebecca’s account, though, Lou was clueless about us.

In bed we made love. She pressed herself close and said, “Smell. Not as nice, is it?”

I smelled rose, but it was sugary and cheap. She wanted the real stuff, just a drop — a molecule.

When I took the perfume from my dresser drawer, she said, “Not much of a hiding spot.”

“That’s what I thought of yours.”

Then she grabbed for it. I held tight and we crashed back onto the bed. She was giving me a good fight, biting my ribs, pulling my hair. When exhaustion wore us down, I tipped the vial onto my finger and applied it to her neck. We lay in bed deep into the night, the perfume high upon the dresser. She was in my arms, and I knew I had to hide the vial before I fell asleep. Then I heard her voice, low and hypnotic.

“I’m going to turn you in.”

I roused, tightened my embrace as though it was lovers’ talk.

“You can’t. I didn’t steal it.”

“But you have it.”

“Darling,” I said, “if you turn me in, I’ll tell them the real story. Then John knows you’re a thief, and your kindly uncle knows you’ve been cavorting with the likes of me. You lose both ways — and you don’t get the perfume.”

“If I turn you in, your life becomes a living hell.”

I pinned her, gripped her neck with my hands. “I could kill you now,” I said. “And that would be the end of this nonsense.”

There was a flash of real fear in her eyes, but only a flash — something had come to her. “I’m at Trina’s tonight,” she said. “When I don’t come home, Lou calls Trina.”

“And?”

“And then Trina tells him about you.”

I was suddenly so pleased with her, with her cunning and forethought, her tenacity. I lowered my head to kiss her, all the while feeling that I was losing myself to her, about to give her something she hadn’t even asked for. I snatched the perfume and took her to the basement, where I pulled boxes away from the wall. When I removed a section of the fake wood paneling with a screwdriver, she laughed and said, “So, you’re going to brick me up back there. I should have figured.”

Then she saw the vault. She stood wide-eyed, the sheets in which she’d wrapped herself slinking down her shoulders. The dial spun swiftly under my fingers, right-left, left-right, and then there was the clean, cold click of the lock giving way. The massive door opened noiselessly. I reached into the darkness and drew out what was inside.

“I knew it!” she screamed. “You sneaky bastard!” She hurled a string of delightful profanity at me, then reached out to touch the painting. She held it while I flicked on a series of mounted spotlights that came together on the opposite wall. I hung the portrait in that pool of radiance — it was alive now, the woman who raised Edgar Allan Poe. She was depicted young, and had a small nose and mouth, large dark eyes and roseate cheeks; her black hair was pulled up, and long strands of it curled past the edges of her eyes down to her jaw. There was a ghostly light about her long neck and her gauzy white dress.

I lost track of how long we stared into it.

Eventually, Rebecca asked, “What’s the point? I mean, it just sits in there. In the dark.”

“What should I do,” I said, “put it up in the living room? Rebecca, having this painting in the vault is dangerous enough. But it’s worth it. It does something to me. Every morning I wake up and remember what’s here, in my house. I’m sitting upon a great secret, and it makes everything... vibrate. But it’s a crime.” I brought my fingers to her neck. “And you don’t wear your crime.”

I put the painting back and the perfume in with it — now she couldn’t rat me out without exposing herself as an accomplice who knew where the secret vault was. I swung the door shut and met Rebecca’s contemptuous gaze. She apparently got the point.

“I want to trust you, Rebecca. And you to trust me. This assures that trust.”

“That’s not trust,” she said. “That’s mutually assured destruction.”

The longer the perfume stayed missing, the more my hours diminished. The museum’s auxiliary technicians were increasingly around, assigned to projects that ordinarily would have gone to me. I was not outright expelled, but more like a child faced into the corner. The cloud of suspicion that had loomed over me eight years before was above me again, and it was dark.

When I confronted John, he said, “Emery, there’s just a lot of talk.”

“Since when do you believe talk?”

“Let’s give it some time,” he said, “let it blow over.”

“Is it Hamlin? Are you listening to Lou Hamlin now?”

“Emery,” he said sharply, “you were the last one with the... People are suspicious.”

Christ, I thought, he defends me when I’m guilty, and condemns me when I’m not — not completely, anyway.

The only bright thing in my life was the source of my troubles. I found it strange that Rebecca’s uncle didn’t try leashing her. Was he duped so easily, believing she spent all her nights at Trina’s? In the basement I’d retrieve the perfume from the safe and trace the oil along her curves. We’d sleep upon the daybed with rose and sweat in the air. Rebecca was surprisingly agreeable to the situation, washing off the perfume dutifully before she left my house each morning, not arguing when I put it back in the safe. If we didn’t make love, or study the painting, Rebecca would pose and I’d manipulate the lights so that I’d swear she floated in them, my treasure.

Rebecca’s internship was nearly complete; she’d be leaving for Cincinnati in a matter of days. It struck me hard, and maybe her too, but neither of us spoke about it. Following my first day of work in four days, Rebecca, walking home beside me in the alleys, presented me with an idea.

“Would things be better for you if they found the perfume?”

I supposed they would, but the small red vial had been so long in our possession, and become so important to us, that I couldn’t imagine being without it.

“I want you to give me the perfume,” she said evenly. “I’ll plant it in a box in one of the storage rooms.”

Her face was confident and serene, and I wanted to kiss the little notch upon her lip for her offer. But it was too dangerous — besides, neither of us had access to the rooms. Then she handed me an envelope. Inside was a key she’d stolen, copied, and returned the day before.

I held onto the key. “It’s too dangerous, Rebecca. If they catch you...”

“Then what? They send me home?”

“Or prison.”

There was the Summer Celebration gala the next night, a fund-raising party for members, staff, and interns. I could do it then, slip in and out amidst the crowd.

“Why do you suddenly want to get rid of it?”

“For you.”

I looked all around at the alley we were in, one of a thousand veins through which coursed the blood of our city to its heart, where a great and mysterious history seemed preserved for us.

“Poe should have died here,” I said, “in these alleys. Not on some bench in Baltimore.”

That night was our last with the perfume.

We took my car. At the museum, Memorial Hall was bustling with ritzy summer gowns and tuxedoed bartenders, colorful spreads of hors d’oeuvres, live jazz. Rebecca and I spent only a few minutes together — the Hamlins were expected shortly — and gulped down our wine in a corner. She was especially striking, having spent so long with her compact mirror as we dressed in the basement, painting on her dark eyes, making her face radiant.

“Rebecca...”

“You have to,” she said. “You can’t lose everything because of me.”

“No, I mean, will you still...”

I was conflicted, afraid that returning the perfume was tossing away the only card I had, tossing away Rebecca herself. I couldn’t finish, but she seemed to know what I meant, because she pulled me to her by my waist and gave me a slow, full-hearted kiss.

“Do it soon,” she said. “I’ll meet you later. Goodbye.” And she disappeared into the crowd.

I waited, put crackers into my dry mouth, said quick hellos, then made my move. I was fueled with wine, sliding through back hallways, full of love for Rebecca. It wasn’t fair that we couldn’t keep it — I hadn’t been fair, keeping it from her. Wouldn’t it all blow over sooner or later? The old case of the missing perfume, just like the painting, which was by now a tired page on an FBI website. In the storage room I stood still, feeling the weight of the vial in my jacket pocket, and Rebecca’s hands still around my waist. I had my treasure — not the painting anymore, but Rebecca. And she, such the devoted student of Poe, deserved to have the perfume. If it was time to return anything, it was the painting. With a wild surge of clarity and elation I rejoined the throngs of people, who had begun dancing as if to emulate my joy. I couldn’t wait to tell Rebecca, to see her face; I’d have liked to see her uncle’s too, just to show him my pleasure and confidence. But I found neither. Someone tugged at my elbow. It was Trina.

“You looking for Rebecca, Mr. Vance? She left a little while ago.”

I stared at her, baffled, then said, “No, Trina. I’m not looking for Rebecca.”

The row of magnolias was empty so I circled back to the parking ramp. She’d be waiting for me, my getaway driver. At my parking spot I discovered three things almost simultaneously: Rebecca wasn’t there, my car was gone, and my keys were no longer in my jacket pocket. I ran home through the alleys trying to keep my mind blank, trying not to remember that last embrace with Rebecca, her hands snaking around my waist. Lou’s house was dark, as was mine. My door was unlocked. Inside I called her name.

Then I read the note:

I had my shot of whiskey, felt my body shudder, and then it came, the mean bang of fists against my door and the wave of blue uniforms through the halls. I heard my name from the lips of one officer, a young sergeant, who explained his warrant for search and seizure. I saw John in his suit, straight from the gala, and Lou Hamlin dressed in black like some prowler.

The young sergeant said solemnly, “Mr. Vance, is there a safe in your basement?”

I managed to ask if that was illegal.

“What you’ve got in it is,” said Lou, sneering.

They ushered me into my basement and Lou coughed with laughter when he saw the safe in plain view. The sergeant tried the handle.

“Open it up, shitbird,” said Lou.

The sergeant raised a finger to quiet Lou — this pleased me — and said, “You’ll have to open the safe, Mr. Vance. That, or it’ll be opened in the lab.”

I felt my cold body rise and fall with my breath; I waited, but nothing came to me: no idea, no plan of escape. I was done.

“No need for that,” I said, and went to open it.

“No,” said the sergeant, blocking me. “Just recite the combination.”

It was an unoriginal set of numbers, the poet’s birthday: 01-19-18-09. As I recited them I remembered spinning the dial earlier in the evening to retrieve the perfume, Rebecca behind me on the bed doing her makeup, mirror in hand. The click of the lock woke me. The flashlights came out like swords and the beams ferreted through the dark, but where the light should have by now found the black hair, the thin nose, the quiet eyes, there was nothing but more dark, and more light chasing in until the beams struck the rear wall of the safe.

All eyes — and the beams of flashlights — turned upon me.

“Where is the painting, Mr. Vance?” asked the sergeant.

I looked at Lou’s face, white and fishy, and kept my eyes on him when I said, “What painting?” It came out weak, unconvincing, but what did it matter? The empty safe was proof — the empty safe would hide my crime. Only John was touching the brackets on the opposite wall, and looking at the spotlights.

Lou erupted, snatching me by the collar and heaving me into the wall for some of his paternal policing. He got in one blow to my face before he was restrained by the officers. He fought at them too, and when he was finally subdued and handcuffed on the floor he was nearly foaming at his white mustache.

“She said!” Lou spat. “She said the painting was here! She saw it!”

Rebecca. His spy all along. I let this sit on my thoughts for a moment, as if seeing how long I could hold an ember.

The sergeant looked beat. He shook his head at Lou. Then his face brightened. “Mr. Hamlin, where is your niece?”

“She doesn’t have it,” he said. “She made this happen!”

Oh, treacherous Rebecca! But her note was coming into focus. She’d duped me good, but she’d gone to great lengths to dupe her uncle too, and leave me protected.

The sergeant peered at me. “Where is Rebecca? Does she have the painting?”

I said nothing.

That’s when I heard John: “Rose. I smell rose.”

Suddenly, I could smell it too, as if it had exploded in my pocket; it was all over me, all over the bed and the walls and the safe. I looked away from John.

“Mr. Vance,” the sergeant continued, “if you can help us, it’ll be good for you.”

John leveled his gaze at me. “The perfume is here. I smell it. I smell the rose perfume!”

The sergeant patted me down and found the vial. He took a disinterested sniff, handed it to John, and turned back to me.

“Now there’s this,” he said, like a tired parent. “We could forget this altogether if you cooperate.”

I looked at the sergeant and at Lou and I savored it, my chance to turn the tables on her, to beat her at her own game. And then I let it go. “Sergeant,” I said, “Mr. Hamlin. Respectfully, I don’t know where Rebecca is and I have no idea what painting you’re talking about.”

“Arrest him,” Lou barked, sandwiched between officers. “Arrest him for the perfume!”

And they might have. But there was John again, the vial in his hand. “This isn’t it.”

“What?” I shouted, unable to stop myself.

John held up the vial and pointed to an unblemished lip. “No chip,” he said. “Anyway, smell it. Putrid!” He placed the vial on a cabinet and made sure I saw the great disappointment in his eyes.

I was berated for another hour by the officers. What kind of game are you playing with us? Do you think you’ve gotten away with it? Don’t you know it’s just a matter of time? Do you really think this is going to end here, tonight? I just stared into a corner, hardly listening. I was thinking of Rebecca on westbound 64, driving fast with my car into the night. The questions weren’t for me; they were for her. And when I found her, I would make sure she heard them.

When I was at last alone, I found the forged bottle where John had set it. Rebecca must’ve made the switch during our final night together. The vial rolled around on my palm. I was so disappointed that she’d forgotten to add the chip, I didn’t have the heart to remove the cork and smell the candy spray she’d put inside.

Homework by David L. Robbins

East End

He waited until the game ended. He did not know the score. He watched parents greet their sons leaving the playing field. Some fathers tousled their boys’ heads, others made the choice to have a teaching moment about a missed fly ball, a swing at a bad pitch. By these reactions, he guessed which team won. Mothers ended chats with other women to fetch their kids to the cinder-block refreshment stand for snow cones. Very few kids were loaded into cars and driven off; most had walked here. This was a beauty of the place, close-knit and small, that had not changed in the ten years he’d been gone.

More things were unaltered. Airplanes still droned low overhead, approaching or departing the airport a mile west. For thirty years, his granddad had worked in the tower there, been among the first ex-soldiers in the 1940s to read the electric green sweep of a radar screen. His father labored at the airport too, but the radar-man’s son was not so clever — these things are known to skip generations — and for twenty-five years he flung down people’s luggage hard enough to give himself heart failure. For six decades the airport bore the name Byrd Field, after the Arctic aviator Richard Byrd. Now the complex was Richmond International, a jumped-up title long ignored by the folks of Sandston.

At his back, behind the bleachers, ran Union Street. Two blocks down, past the elementary school, stood the saltbox house where he grew up. He didn’t need to look to know it was there. Everything in Sandston lasted, another genius of the place. While the airport had been updated enough to get a new address, the little burg itself was designed to be timeless. Sandston existed in baseball fields and playground, VFW, dentist and barber, tack shop, elementary school, and several hundred houses too simple and affordable to ever be without some humble resident or other. All stood along roads with monikers that centuries would surely not pry away, named after the generals blue and gray who in 1862 struggled for this land, wooded then, during the Seven Days Battle. Jackson, Sedgwick, Magruder, Pickett, Garland, Finley, Naglee, Mc-Clellan, every street sign a banner to everlasting honor But he’d left Sandston.

He wore no hat. The sun made him wince. He sweated and bore the unstinted summer and hot metal bleachers, no money for a soda, no care for the families of Sandston.

The afternoon aged, pinking toward dusk without cooling. Someone on the sidewalk behind the stands spoke his name, in a question, recognizing him without certainty. “Carl?” He did not turn to look. The inquiry died.

He stayed in the bleachers past the time when the field emptied, the snow cone stand shuttered, and the game and crowd were echoes in his head. The midsummer sun vanished but took another hour to pull dusk down behind it. A block away, the last tennis players quit from the dark. Once the pulses of their game stilled and the streets were vacant, Carl came down.

He rummaged through a big trash can for bottles of water, soda cans with flat remnants in the bottom, cups with water from melted ice still in them. He drank what he could find, but would not eat thrown-away food. He did not parse himself for hypocrisy. Some things were beneath him, some were not.

He moved away from the trash can and the flies drawn to it, returning to the bleachers. He did not climb up but sat under them, cross-legged like a Buddha with candy wrappers and napkins. Overhead, the bleacher seats blocked the stars like drawn blinds.

Carl stared only at the home across the street.

He had nothing. This suited him, because he wanted nothing.

No, there was one thing he had. It, itself, was multifaceted. He had hunger, but he was accustomed to it so it felt separate from him, like an item in his pocket. He had pain; this was diffuse, also familiar, and would go away soon, tonight. He had returning memories of the little ball field, these hot stands, his name called not cautiously but loudly so he could hear it out on the field, running hard to catch a ball or score. Lots of people cheering. The memories had no shelf or cubby inside him where he could tuck them away to wait until he was better. The images continued to rise, going the opposite direction of the sun. Tiny desks inside the elementary school, the tennis courts behind the VFW, parents wearing caps of their sons’ teams, lawn chairs, chain-link fences separating small backyards in the Sandston neighborhood behind him. He tried closing his eyes against the old scenes. Instead, the emptiness beneath his lids made a canvas for the hunger and pain, both patient, so he opened his eyes and submitted to the memories. They were the thing he had.

Then, to balance and return to zero, there was one thing he wanted. Tonight.

He’d been in that house once. He did some quick math to figure out how long ago, nineteen years. Nothing had changed about it: the clipped hedge on both sides of the flagstone sidewalk still led to concrete steps, the house was scaled with weathered gray siding, the window mullions painted white, the door scarlet, a plastic wreath hung around the pineapple brass knocker. Inside, he recalled doilies. Hook rugs, flowery fabrics, a cool checkerboard of black-and-white linoleum on the kitchen floor. When he was nine, it was an old lady’s house.

He’d been inside because he’d hurt himself here, on the ball field. He’d tripped on the base path, rounding second, trying to be fast like a Yankee or a Cardinal. He’d skinned his knee and his palms, and ripped his uniform pants. The fall coated him with the red dirt of the infield and he was shamed at being tagged out, sitting between second and third, sucking his teeth, clutching a stinging knee to his chest. His coach yelled from the dugout, “What were you thinking?” The umpire made a fist in the air to say, You’re out.

He could get up but he wanted to sit and cry, to cover his mistake. No one offered him a hand from the other team, and his coach shouted, “Come over here!” The umpire walked away, back to first base, because there were two outs and no one left on base. Carl had hit a double and was stretching it into a triple when his feet tangled. Someone should give a guy a hand up when he does that, even when he doesn’t make it.

The whole ball field went silent. Carl heard a crow, that’s how quiet it was that day.

The metal bleachers sounded a slow drumbeat, hollow and dirgeful. Mrs. Wilcox stepped down them, resolute. She strode out of the bleachers, away from all the others who would not stand and who had shouted at him for making an out. She was a tall, pale, gaunt woman. He did not know her first name but believed it was Agnes, Mildred, or Virginia, something austere.

Mrs. Wilcox walked onto the field. She looked nowhere but at him. No one, not even his coach, shouted at her When she reached him, she did not bend but sent down an open hand. He took it and was lifted to his feet. The torn knee smarted and dirt clung in the scrapes on his palms, but he walked with her hand-in-hand away from the game, across the street, into her house.

“You were showing off,” she said, pulling out a kitchen chair.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you see where that got you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She disappeared, to return with a bottle of iodine and a box of Band-Aids.

“Roll those pants up.”

He did so gingerly, loosing dirt from his uniform onto her kitchen floor.

“I’ll get that,” she said. “Come on.”

She soaked a washcloth, then took the chair beside him. She patted her lap, for him to lift his leg up. He did. Her leg under his did not feel so bony as he’d figured it might. She patted clean his scrape. When the blood and infield dirt were wiped off, the wound looked like claw marks, little trenches that filled with blood again. Mrs. Wilcox pressed the washcloth over his knee and watched his face for a reaction. He gritted his teeth and looked down.

When she pulled away the cloth, the gouges stayed white. “There, now.”

She coated iodine over the cuts, blowing while she painted. Then she moved him to the sink, washed his hands, and dabbed the slices on both his palms with more iodine.

When she was done and the throbs in all his wounds eased, she stood back, hands on hips. She towered.

“Back to the field with you.”

“You came to the game.”

“It’s right across the street from my house. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve seen a few of your games, Carl. I like to keep up with my favorite students.”

“I was your favorite?”

“One of my favorites.”

She walked him to the front door. He went out first and held the screen door for her to follow. She stayed behind.

“You go ahead,” she said. “Finish up. I’ll see another game.”

He looked into the white bottom of her chin. Her open hand floated to the top of his head to lift his ball cap. Mrs. Wilcox rubbed his crown.

“Mrs. Wilcox?”

“Yes?”

“Will I have you again in fourth grade?”

“No.”

She handed him back his cap.

“Go on,” she said. “And don’t worry. You can come see me anytime.”

He touched his own head now, beneath the bleachers, watching the dark windows of her house.

He crawled from under the stands, ducking the crossbars, and walked onto the diamond. The dimensions struck him, how small the field was. He sat in the red dirt between second and third, feeling gargantuan. He thought of his old coach and teammates, wondering where any of them were today. Did he get lost, to know nothing of them anymore? Were their lives so different from his, that they never crossed paths? Surely, he thought. He grew irritated, that he should be the one to consider himself lost. Why him? He was the one stretching a double into a triple. He fell, but he was the one. They were the lost boys. They never went for it.

An ache brought his hand to his gut. The last time he sat here, he hurt too. He rose, and like he did long ago, walked with his pain off the field, across the street.

He stopped in front of her home. He cased the house in a minute. One story, probably two bedrooms. No bars or electronic alarms. No lights inside, no car parked in front. He slid along a wall to the backyard. No doghouse or pet toys on the grass. He crept up the back steps to peer inside the kitchen door. No dishes in the sink or on the counter, nothing on the table, the same table where she’d painted him with iodine and blown on it. Curtains drawn against the summer sun.

He sucked one deep breath, considering another way to go. Walk off. Choose something else. That was the difference, he thought. Choice. He did not have it. In the end, that was what set him apart from everyone else. It made him innocent too. He took from his pocket a small flashlight. With the butt, he tapped the pane closest to the doorknob, just hard enough to break it.

The glass rived into fissures. He paused to see if any light or sound came from inside. He flung his eyes to the neighbors’ yards, checking for lights flicked on, any attention paid to the suspicious noise he’d just made. Nothing. He returned to the broken pane. The house remained dark. He pushed in one crack; a lone shard grinded and gave way, to break on the kitchen floor with a tinkle. He pulled to him more swords of glass, until he had enough room to reach his hand inside to the locked bolt and doorknob.

He stepped on tiptoes into Mrs. Wilcox’s house. The only glow came from a digital clock on the stove. He laid the sharp bits of broken glass in the trash can, and with the flashlight in his teeth chased down the busted pieces on the floor.

He quickly found the first thing he needed, a cloth grocery bag. Keeping the flashlight from straying across the curtains and Levolor blinds, he surveyed the kitchen. It matched his memory; a few new knickknacks had been added, but the layout, the tile floor, the feel, remained unaltered. He opened and closed a few drawers. There’d be nothing of value in this room, but he lingered until he caught himself running his hand over the kitchen chairs.

He moved into the den, careful with the flashlight beam. Just as on the ball field across the street, he felt huge against this room. The feeling swept not only out of his recollection, when he’d been so much smaller, but now, as a trespasser.

The shelves and tabletops in the den offered nothing he could sell. Mrs. Wilcox’s own memories were on display, in pictures and bric-a-brac. He cursed under his breath before shining the light on one silver cup, engraved with an acknowledgment of forty-three years’ teaching in Henrico County. There was her first name, Julia. He never would have guessed. He dropped the cup in the sack. Keeping his touch light, he slid open the drawer of a side table.

“I don’t have any jewelry.”

He whirled, shining the flashlight straight at her She stood in pink nightclothes, barefoot, her long hand on the wall of the arch leading to the hall.

“I do have two gold fillings.” She shuffled forward. He left Sandston Elementary sixteen years ago; he had not seen her again until now. She remained taller than him. She said, “But if you were a dentist, I doubt you’d be breaking into people’s homes.”

Mrs. Wilcox felt her way through the room, one arm outstretched. She dodged a table and lamp to deposit herself on an easy chair, which rocked back when she sat; a pad lifted under her feet. The chair was a recliner.

“Go ahead,” she said, wagging the back of a hand at him across the little room. “I can’t be expected to sleep while I’m being robbed.”

He aimed the flashlight directly into her face. Crinkles creviced her eyes and the circumference of her mouth. Her face was spotty and white like a full moon. She didn’t flinch.

“Did you call the police?” he asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I honestly do not possess one item that anyone could find a reason to steal. And I do not want the ruckus the police will bring with them. So, grab whatever you think will have value. I likely won’t miss it.”

He took steps toward her, not on tiptoes now, searching her with the flashlight beam. She held no phone, no weapon. Her nightdress exposed her contours, breasts sagging at her age; she concealed nothing. She wore no necklace or bracelet. Her arms and legs in the sallow light were paler than he recalled. Her hair, cut short, had gone snowy.

So had her eyes.

He strode to within a few steps of her. He wavered the light across her eyes. They did not blink or follow.

“You’re blind.”

“That’s right.”

“What happened?”

“The sugar diabetes.”

“When?”

“Took awhile.”

He waggled the light again, disbelieving. She did not register, but lifted her gaze to where she approximated his head must be. She missed, looking just to the left of his face, and this was disconcerting.

She said, “Go ahead and take what you need. Then please leave without breaking any more of my windows. You’ll find the newest thing in the house is the stove.”

He did not move away, or pull the flashlight from her eyes. She stared blankly and intently ahead, keen with her ears, he could tell. He examined her features for some modicum of fear, regret, even disgrace at being sightless, but saw none on Mrs. Wilcox.

“I’m going into the bedroom. You sit still.”

“That is my intention.”

He made quick work of her drawers and closets. True to her word, he found no valuables or loose jewels. She had no iPod, laptop, or cell phone. She’d pared her possessions down to only furniture and items of comfort. He found her purse on the dresser table and rooted inside. Her wallet surrendered one credit card and four twenty-dollar bills. He took the cash. Credit cards were a sucker steal, a fast way to get tracked and caught. He left it.

He didn’t bother with the guest bedroom. He returned to the den where she had not moved, her feet still up. A pang struck, widespread in his body, in his veins.

“You’ve got to have something,” he said.

“I don’t.”

He raised his right hand high across his chest, above his left shoulder, and brought the knuckles down hard across her cheek. The blow knocked Mrs. Wilcox sideways in the lounger; she almost rolled off it but the arm of the chair caught her. He stood in front of her, his hand followed through high, stinging.

“You do.”

She righted herself in the chair. She worked her jaw and touched fingertips to the angry mark spreading on her face.

“What I find fascinating,” she said evenly, “is that, somehow in your view, I deserved that.”

“You weren’t supposed to be blind.”

Lowering his hand, he backed away to the sofa. He cut off the flashlight, to sit and join Mrs. Wilcox in the darkness. They sat silently for a minute. He began to feel at a disadvantage, that she could function like this better than he.

“Why on earth,” she said into the inky room sizzling with the aftermath of the violence, “would that matter to you?” This was no plea or whine. Mrs. Wilcox was puzzled, and figuring. “Do you know me?”

“I know you.”

“Were you one of my students?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I had over a thousand. Stands to reason one of you would turn out a bad penny.” She said this with her hand returned to her cheek. She nodded into the darkness that was only hers.

He sat rigid on the sofa, afraid of her fixed stare. She cocked her head. Across the street on the ball field, a few children whooped, playing night-blind baseball. Mrs. Wilcox listened to them for a few moments, perhaps trying to recognize voices.

She spoke, still with her head tilted, as if the man across the room from her and the misbehaving children outside were no different.

“Where did I fail you?”

Did she just call him a failure? The notion smacked him across his own cheek. He hadn’t failed. Lousy luck, rotten economy, poor employees, greedy bankers, bad blows. These had failed him.

“What are you going to buy with my eighty dollars? Drugs, I assume, and what else?”

“Some food. A bus ride back downtown.”

She shook her head at the hook rug between them. Then she seemed to understand, or unravel, something. She put clouded eyes on him.

“Are you homeless?”

“For now.”

“How did that happen?”

He did not like the question; it seemed too complex a thing to ask about so simply. He was not sitting at a little desk anymore answering her.

“It took awhile.”

Her cheek glared a harsh vermillion. He expected to strike her again.

“Son, listen to me. In every life, at some point, we can’t predict when, a snapshot goes off, and there you stay. I’m seventy-seven years old now, but inside I’m just fourteen. You, I can tell, you’re still nine. You still hurt.”

He rose to take a step toward her.

She stopped him with an open hand. Her thin white fingers looked like pieces of chalk. “I don’t know who you are.”

“I think you do.”

“I don’t. Anyway, why would that be a concern? I’m blind. No court is ever going to let me be a witness.”

He stood rooted, halfway to her in the room.

“I can’t help you,” she said.

These words condemned him.

“I can’t help myself.”

Mrs. Wilcox’s hands flew from her sides, a familiar flapping gesture from long ago, for a wrong answer.

“Well, that’s downright ignorant, and disappointing to hear. I clearly did let you down, if that’s where your life has wound up on you. Can’t help yourself. What kind of pitiful fool did you grow into?”

Mrs. Wilcox pushed forward, collapsing the lounger into a regular chair. She put her bare feet down and rose, steady and spiteful.

“Let me be plain about this. Smack me around, if it soothes you. But you, young man, have to take care of your problems yourself, instead of dragging them in your third grade teacher’s back door. Aside from the obvious illegality, this is farcical and not worthy of you.”

He followed her with the flashlight, illuminating her way without considering that she did not need it. She stepped with her gray head high, back to her bedroom. She did not close the door between them. The bed springs creaked when she lay down.

She announced, “I am going back to bed.”

Carl cut off the flashlight. His need and his ache swelled.

He felt his way to the lounger. He sat on the warmed upholstery and leaned back, lifting his legs. In the blackness he sat like this, listening to her breathe in the next room. Little by little, his eyes adjusted to seeing nothing.

Across the street, children continued to laugh. A ball hit the chain-link backstop behind home plate. A boy called for it to be thrown again. Moments later, a wooden bat struck solidly. Carl used to do this with his buddies, thrilling to the peril of trying to hit and catch a baseball in the dark. He cringed in his memory, unable to see the ball out there in the night, falling somewhere.

“Tell them,” Mrs. Wilcox called from the bedroom, “to go home. It’s too late for that nonsense. Someone could get injured.”

He rose from the recliner to do as she instructed. He walked out her door to the field. High above, a jet streaked home to the airport, lights at the extreme of each wing like falling stars. Sandston hummed to window units, cooling behind closed doors and windows. These kids on the ball field broke that pact which Sandston made with itself, to stay quiet, and, in that way, stay.

“Y’all need to go home,” he announced to five boys.

The one batting answered: “Who says?”

“The lady across the street.”

“Who’s she?”

“A teacher.”

This seemed enough, and they quit.

Carl mounted the bleachers to watch the boys shuffle off. He sat for another ten minutes to guard against their return. Years back, if he’d been one of those kids, he’d go directly home down Union Avenue after being told by an adult. He recalled his mother, who kept brownies in a tin on top of the refrigerator, or German chocolate cake slices in wax paper. His father, shutting the front door with a loud click after struggling all day with high blood pressure and passengers’ bags. His grandfather, Lucky Strike on his lips, gazing like a green-faced gypsy into the sweeping screen. They all fought hard over this land, though not in blue or gray, and without streets named after them. Mrs. Wilcox will depart too, from this town out by the airport. Carl considered staying.

He climbed down from the stands to cross the street before she locked him out and he had to go in again through the back door.

Gaia by Mina Beverly

Providence Park

Long before she was a stripper, nicknamed Blaxican because of her mixed parentage, Gaia Esparza was a good student. As a schoolgirl, she’d learned that her street, Ladies Mile Road, had been a haven, a mile-long neutral zone in Providence Park. It was named for the white women who’d been tucked away there, safe to consider their fate and care for children while their men fought Union soldiers in Church Hill. That had been a long time ago. Now, it was probably difficult for most people to imagine that anyone had ever felt safe in Providence Park.

In a way, Gaia understood that feeling, but she didn’t share it. The neighborhood was mostly board houses, a few small clusters of project apartments, a boarded-up group home, and an ancient brick church, all just a few miles away from an industrial district. It wasn’t as dangerous as the evening news would have people believe, if you knew how to survive. And Gaia did. She’d had to learn the hard way, but she wasn’t a child anymore. Now, she knew the secret: money, knowing how to get your own, so no one could ever say you owed them anything. Money meant freedom, power, and protection. It meant that Gaia’s best friend, Charlene, could afford a real attorney. So, early on Saturday morning, when Felicia Doolittle came rattling her window screen, Gaia knew she would say yes before Doo even opened her mouth. Gaia squinted against the morning sun and leaned into the doorframe. As usual, Doo’s breasts were flattened, hidden underneath a crisp white shirt that looked oddly stark against her sepia-colored skin. The long shirt reached her knees and, in large black letters, it read, Stop snitching. A fitted camouflage cap, tilted to the side, covered her close haircut. Several layers of pants made her petite frame appear bulky. It was January and cold outside, and Doo wasn’t wearing a coat, but Gaia didn’t invite her in.

“You in?” Doo asked, her hand pressed against the screen, her dark, slanted eyes taking in Gaia’s long legs stretched out beneath a short, silky robe.

Gaia shifted uncomfortably.

Doo licked her lips, blackened from years of smoking. “What’s the problem? The guy is a sure thing. He has the perfect family. Two kids. Even a fucking dog that looks like Lassie.”

Gaia nodded. “I know. I’m in.”

Gaia had never met Mr. X, but Doo’s description of him was probably dead on. He probably even had a little blond PTA wife. Gaia had met many men like him before, had enjoyed taking their money. This time was different, though. Charlene wouldn’t be there and Gaia could feel her pulse pounding in her neck at the thought of being alone with just Mr. X and Doo.

Doo started to walk away, but turned around as Gaia was closing the door. “Hey, I could come by here earlier if you want to get fucked up before.”

“Let’s just keep this business, Doo.”

Doo grinned, shaking her head. “All right. Midnight then.”

Doo was unpredictable and working alone with her worried Gaia. The one person who could keep Doo in line, her lover and Gaia’s best friend, Charlene, had been locked up the week before for boosting GPS consoles and assaulting the arresting officer. Charlene needed a lawyer, a real one, and Gaia knew that working with Doo was the only way to get the kind of money necessary. A court-appointed lawyer was the surest way to lose her only friend to the prison system. Even if, lately, Gaia had been wondering about their friendship.

Charlene had been Gaia’s friend ever since Tenth House. Nine years ago, Gaia had been a shy ten-year-old who kept to herself when a fourteen-year-old girl with fuzzy braids, a bossy attitude, and a desperate need to mother something had hooked arms with her and declared that she would be Gaia’s play mom. To Gaia, that was unwelcome news. Gaia had a real mom, whose face she could draw by heart, a mom who would get sober soon and who would never again forget to take Gaia to school for forty-five days straight. Besides, Gaia didn’t want to be friends with Charlene Christmas of all people. The girl had these crazy, terrifying outbursts. One second she’d be calm, staring into space, and the next she’d be yelling at the top of her lungs. The counselors sometimes had to restrain her physically during these violent fits, when she would scream over and over again, “I want my baby!”

One day, when Charlene found Gaia balled up in a corner, weeping, she pried and prodded until, gingerly, Gaia handed her a small notebook. It was a diary and inside it was the truth about Mr. Gardener, the sixty-year-old man who oversaw the entire staff of Tenth House, and who had been molesting Gaia for a year. Three times a week, like clockwork, his bony fingers troubled her sleep. The jarring scent of his woodsy Outlaw cologne mixed with the smell of the old-people liniment he rubbed on his bad knees. He called those nighttime visits payment for putting a roof over her head when no one else would. Charlene shared the diary with another counselor and was punished for lying.

Still, it put a sudden stop to Mr. Gardener, at least up until Charlene left Tenth House for good two years later. To Gaia, Charlene was her savior, her protector, her god. She was only truly safe when Charlene was nearby. They kept in touch as Gaia went round and round the revolving doors of Tenth House, until she finally broke free from the confining walls of Mr. Gardener’s punishment room in the attic, where he sent her when she was uncooperative. She moved in with Charlene, into the housing projects not more than three blocks from their now-abandoned group home, near enough to it so that a mother coming back for her long-lost child would still easily find her. The two women fell into a comfortable routine and were inseparable. Charlene had even convinced Slick, the manager of Club Pink Kitten, to hire sixteen-year-old Gaia, so that they could work together.

Now there was Doo. Doo, who in the last year had turned out not to be a phase at all but instead a permanent fixture. Doo, who stared at Gaia when Charlene wasn’t looking, who bought new furniture, new tension, and new schemes. Charlene was so in love with Doo that she had threatened to evict Gaia if she told any more lies about Doo’s flirtatious behavior. She was completely blind to Doo’s faults. Slowly but surely, Gaia saw herself being pushed away to make room for another woman. Lately, she had done everything she could not to be alone with Doo, but tonight she didn’t have a choice. Charlene, her defender, the only one who could keep the bad things at bay, needed help.

Around 6 o’clock, while Gaia was giving herself a pedicure, Charlene called collect from the Richmond City Jail.

“I’m in,” Gaia said, after accepting the call.

“I know. Doo told me.”

The sound of Charlene’s voice came through clear, but she still seemed distant.

“Are you happy?” Gaia asked.

“Of course. I want the hell out of here.”

“I’m nervous.”

Charlene sighed. “Come on. You’re a pro at this.”

“Yeah. When you’re there. When I can look at you.”

“Just do it.

Gaia paused. Her lip trembled. She took a deep breath. “But what about Doo? You know how she gets when you’re not around. Can you talk to her and—”

“Are we back on this? Listen, and this is the very last time I’m going to say this: Doo loves me. She thinks you’re an immature little kid, Gaia. I had to beg her to do this with you because she doesn’t trust you to keep your head straight. Was she right?”

“No. No, I can do it. I’m just a little nervous.”

“Damnit, G. This is my life on the line. And you owe me. You better not back out. I swear to God, Gaia.”

“I won’t, Char! I swear.”

“Okay. Good. You my girl.”

Gaia tried to imagine what Charlene could be wearing. Probably an orange jumpsuit. She wondered if Charlene’s hot pink nail polish was chipping away. Wondered if the phone was pressed between her shoulder and her ear or if she was clutching the receiver with both hands, like Gaia was.

“I love you,” Gaia said.

“Aw, don’t get mushy. Just do like Doo says and everything will be fine.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t let me down.”

“I won’t.”

A half hour before midnight, Gaia slipped into a curve-hugging black minidress and put on her favorite pair of red patent-leather stilettos. She painted her lips a fiery red and pulled her long braid free, letting her heavy brown curls fall around her shoulders and down her back. She found Charlene’s loaded Glock underneath the mattress and hid it in a black handbag for protection. With her short leather trench belted at the waist, she walked outside onto the dark patio to wait for Doo. She thought about Charlene in handcuffs a week before, violently kicking Officer O’Rourke’s cruiser.

Outside, the air was bitingly cold against Gaia’s bare legs, but she had been claustrophobic inside the small apartment, battling the deafening silence, the persistent emptiness, and a constant stream of thoughts that told her to double check the door to make sure she wasn’t locked in. She felt safer out in the open, where no matter how far up she stretched her hands she’d never touch a wall. On either side of her was yet another one-level apartment. These project apartments all looked alike on the inside: cold cement walls, two small bedrooms, few windows, and a clear view of the back door as soon as you walked in the front door. Outside, plastic chairs and card tables cluttered the tiny front patios, and one of Gaia’s neighbors was sitting out smoking a cigarette. Gaia settled into a cold plastic chair and watched the neighborhood pulsing around her.

The wind blew, rushing like floodwaters between the small gaps that separated buildings, blowing litter around on balding lawns and into deep potholes in the street. The street came alive at night, bustling with activity. It was rush hour for the corner boys. They hopped in and out of cars like musical chairs. Gaia took deep breaths and listened as the one-woman Neighborhood Watch Association, Ms. Nora, shooed a group of the boys from under the big shade tree in the front yard of her shabby clapboard house across the street from the projects.

“Go stand under that street lamp and let Jesus and the rest of the world see what you doing, niggas. Go on, you little hooligans!”

The boys moved their operation a few feet down the block, joking around in front of the fenced-in playground behind the recreation center, where Gaia had played as a child. Tonight, she thought she saw the dim glow of a lit cigarette briefly penetrate the darkness of the basketball court, its smoker cloaked in nightfall. Gaia knew that the blood of gunshot victims had touched the blacktop almost as often as basketballs had. She sometimes wondered if other people saw the ghosts of those victims roaming at night, haunting the neighborhood, hiding in shadowy corners. It made her wonder if she’d ever leave Providence Park, even after she died.

Restless, Gaia’s legs bounced up and down, the heels of her shoes rhythmically clicking the concrete. It was a unique feeling she got right before she, Charlene, and Doo set out on one of these kinds of nights. It had been three months since she’d felt it, the anticipation of being in complete control of a man’s fate, his life, his livelihood. It was intoxicating. But tonight, most of what she felt was anxiety about Charlene’s absence.

When Doo’s shiny Cadillac pulled up to the curb, Gaia pinched the cold flesh of her right leg between two acrylic fingernails and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt for the piece of Charlene she had hidden in her handbag, and told her legs not to shake as she walked briskly over to Doo’s car.

Doo jumped out from her side of the vehicle and ran around to open the passenger-side door before Gaia reached it. Charlene usually rode shotgun and Doo had never made this kind of gesture for her.

In the car with the windows up, Gaia could smell the booze coming through Doo’s pores and knew she was feeling no pain. That was no surprise. The most dangerous place in the world was between Doo and a bottle of Southern Comfort.

Doo took her hand off the steering wheel, turned toward Gaia, and rubbed her thumb back and forth against the rest of her fingers. She smiled, her eyebrows shooting up questioningly. “Feel me? Lot of money on the line with this one. You gotta be on point tonight. He’s expecting two.” She stopped talking and looked down at Gaia’s bare legs, illuminated by the streetlight they sat parked under, then chuckled lightly. “But I’m sure he’ll be more than happy when he sees you.”

“It’s Charlene that’s on the line. Remember?”

“What?” Doo’s head snapped up. “How the fuck could I forget that? She’s my number one priority, and I’m hers. You remember that.”

“Well, she’s the only reason I’m doing this.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re serious, you need to hike that skirt up a little bit more.” Doo grinned and pushed back Gaia’s stretchy black mini until the hem rested on the upper thigh. Her finger grazed and lingered over the bare skin of Gaia’s leg. Gaia used her foot to drag her handbag toward the seat. Her pulse quickened.

“Doo,” she warned, hoping a firm tone would be enough.

Doo threw her head back and laughed. “Easy,” she said, and pulled away from the curb.

Seeing both of Doo’s hands occupied with steering, Gaia leaned back against the headrest and tried to relax. Her neck felt tight, her muscles tense.

“Can I have the rest?” she asked Doo, pointing to the bottle of whiskey lying overturned on the floor mat.

Doo glanced at it quickly and nodded. Gaia put it to her lips and emptied in one gulp. It burned her throat, made her choke. Doo laughed.

They drove out of Providence Park and hit the interstate going west. They traveled past where the bus line ended; it was not more than twenty-five minutes away, but far beyond where many of Gaia’s neighbors without cars had ever ventured. Eventually they arrived at a hotel in the West End called The Studio.

After she got the key from the desk clerk, Doo pulled the car into a parking space directly in front of their room. The world was resting in this part of town. Stepping out of the car, Gaia heard the click of her high heels echo in the air. She could feel the whiskey mixing with her blood. She shuddered, feeling the wind wrapping around her legs, blowing against her face, whispering her name. She stepped up onto the sidewalk and waited as Doo opened the door to the suite that she’d reserved and paid for earlier that day.

Inside, Doo sat on a chair and put her feet up on the sofa. She lit a blunt right away. Gaia didn’t want to risk an incident with Doo, especially when Doo was high and tipsy. She went into the bedroom to get away from the smoke and sort her mind out.

Gaia hadn’t grown up wanting to be this way. At eight years old, survival wasn’t something that entered into daily decisions, like whether to play dress-up or hopscotch. And though, shortly after, she could no longer make sense of her upturned life, it had taken Charlene’s words to make her realize that it wasn’t beauty alone that determined her fate. There were plenty of beautiful girls in the home. She had been marked. It was an obvious fact and the only possible thing to do was embrace it — the same way she had embraced how her legs eventually grew like stems — and use it to her benefit.

Tonight, she would be as irresistible as ever and she would be paid because of it. She set her handbag on the nightstand and took out the Glock, which she slipped underneath a pillow. She sat down to lotion her penny-colored skin and thought about what Charlene had said a year ago, the first time she approached Gaia with Doo’s big scheme. Girl, look at you. You already know they gon’ come after you, whether you like it or not. So why not make them pay for it? Make him forget his own name, his wife’s name, shit, his kids’ names. He’ll think he’s winning, until he gets the bill. Don’t be scared, girl. I’ll be right there. She could almost hear Charlene’s voice, almost feel her in the room.

Doo knocked on the door.

Gaia took a deep breath before she opened it. Doo was standing there with Mr. X. His cropped brown hair was slick with hair gel. His pale blue eyes set a sharp contrast against his all-black business attire. Towering a foot over Doo, his belly was the only part of his body that had already crossed the threshold. He looked to be in his late forties.

“Where’s the other one?” Mr. X queried, scanning the room.

Doo had met Mr. X while she was bartending a party in one of those sprawling estates on Monument Avenue. She had been keeping him well-stocked in pills and cocaine ever since, and had been secretly following him, studying him for weeks.

Gaia reached for his hand. It was plump and sweaty. She slowly rubbed the back of it with her thumb. “Char’s not feeling well. It’s just me tonight. Is that okay?”

He hesitated, looking thoughtfully at Gaia. She didn’t doubt for a second that he would stay. She was a magnet, a stronger force than even she herself could control. She felt the tension go out of his hand.

“Are you just going to stand there and watch? Get the fuck out,” he told Doo, never taking his eyes off Gaia.

The corners of Gaia’s red lips turned up into a seductive smile. “Watch? I can make her go away like this.” She snapped her fingers.

Mr. X laughed as Gaia pulled him forward over the threshold and kicked the door closed with her foot.

She led him to the bed, purposely swaying her ass, knowing his eyes were fixed there. He sat down and started taking off his shoes. “No,” she said. He looked up at her His lustful stare felt like a tongue licking her face. “Let me do that.”

She undressed him, throwing his pants clear across the room toward the door, as he ran his hands up the inside of her leg, making low, guttural noises. He stood up and she was eye to eye with his coarse chest hair. He was impatient with her, almost tearing her dress.

“Slow,” she whispered.

She had done this dozens of times by now. Each man desperately wanted to invade the space between her legs, not knowing that it did not belong to her. She could never feel any sensation down there because it wasn’t a part of her real body, and any man who entered soon found he would have to pay a higher price than he had thought. That is why she welcomed them and laughed inside while they grunted and moaned. A soundproof wall separated her from them, kept her from hearing the compliments they choked out between heavy breaths. The only sound she would listen for tonight was Doo, tiptoeing back into the room to get their insurance.

Mr. X had Gaia pressed against a wall, between the bed and the nightstand. Her nose was crushed against his neck and she breathed in his woodsy cologne. The scent stung her nostrils and went sliding down her throat, into her mouth. It sat bitterly on the back of her tongue. She hadn’t smelled it in three years, but the scent was unmistakable. Suddenly, his lips felt familiar against her skin. His hands were bony and wrinkled. She thought her knees might buckle as she squeezed her eyes shut tightly, her head growing light. She was losing it. The control was slipping from her hands and into his. She tried to take it back.

“Stop,” she said.

He tore his lips away from her shoulders. “Why?” he asked breathlessly.

“Your cologne. Wash it off.”

“What? No.”

He pushed her against the wall again. Grabbing a fistful of her hair, he yanked her head back and smothered her protests with his lips. She looked up into his eyes, but they were closed. What color had Gardener’s eyes been? Her breathing was so staccato that her chest started to ache. And the scent, his scent, was so thick she feared she might be suffocated. She gasped when he lifted her leg and forced himself inside of her. For the first time in years, she felt something. She tried to expand herself, to make herself wide enough for two ships to pass through.

She didn’t know how long it lasted, but when it was over, she heard him say, “That was amazing.” She heard his zipper going up, his expensive loafers sliding against the carpet, the door swinging closed. Lying naked on the bed, she wondered if it was her or the room that was spinning. She closed her eyes to try and regain her balance. When she opened them, she was not alone. Doo was leaning over her. Gaia tried to sit up, but she felt pinned to the bed. Her throat was dry and her tongue was like cotton.

Doo was smiling. “I got the pictures. You did good. See, we didn’t even need Charlene. We’re a great team.” She brushed a stray hair away from Gaia’s face.

Gaia watched Doo’s lips come closer and closer and shut her eyes when she tasted whiskey and stale cigarettes on Doo’s thick tongue.

Gaia shook her head, started to say no.

“Shh,” Doo’s mouth whispered. Her hands came up to grip one of Gaia’s exposed breasts.

Trembling, Gaia’s fingers searched for the cold steel underneath her pillow. Her arm felt like it weighed fifty pounds when she lifted the gun and swung it over and over against the back of Doo’s head. The hard steel connected with bone and made a cracking sound. Doo shrieked in pain and covered her head with both hands. They fell to the ground with a thud, the lamp, the alarm clock, and the nightstand all clattering down with them.

Doo went limp, stopped moving or making any sounds, the back of her head against the carpet. Gaia dropped the gun and crawled to the corner behind the door, sitting with her red knees pulled up to her chest. She watched as the pool of blood coming from Doo’s head turned the beige carpeting purple-red.

The muffled beeps of the fallen alarm clock sounded like they were coming from inside Doo’s baggy jeans. Laughter bubbled in Gaia’s stomach and rose up her throat like a gush of water. Her whole body shook with laughter as Doo beeped and beeped. Gaia crawled over to the body. She hovered above Doo and then lifted her shirt. Doo’s breasts were strapped down in layers of ace bandages. “Shh,” Gaia whispered, pulling the bandages down. She laughed as one soft breast tumbled out.

Gaia was about to touch it with the tip of her finger when a loud screeching of tires squealed just outside the window.

She shook her head and blinked rapidly. Her breathing hastened as a weight seemed to suddenly sit down on her chest. What had she done? Oh God, Doo! And Charlene. Charlene would hate Gaia, never speak to her again. Gaia’s body collapsed and she dropped her head to the carpet. She felt like dying. She felt like disappearing, like hiding. She felt... cold. She spied her dress lying at the foot of the bed and crawled to get it. She pulled it over her head and felt the fabric wiping away the tears that rushed down her cheeks.

Turning her head slowly back toward the spot on the floor where Doo lay, she started to say, I’m sorry, Charlene, but the words caught in her throat. She stared at Doo’s tar-stained lips until they were two brown blurs, and realized it wasn’t true. She wasn’t sorry. She stood up momentarily and then sat on the bed as she surveyed the room. Overturned tables, blood-soaked carpet. She was sitting on something hard. She got up, saw that it was Doo’s small, silver camera, and squeezed it between her hands. She was holding one of the only pieces of real evidence that she had ever been here tonight. She studied Doo’s small body. Doo couldn’t be more than a hundred and twenty, a hundred and thirty pounds. Could she?

Gaia drove east toward Providence Park, by instinct, not choice. She knew exactly what was waiting for her back there. Zooming down the interstate, Gaia felt only relief when she thought about Doo’s lifeless body wrapped in a sheet on the floor of the Cadillac. She had protected herself and taken control of what belonged to her. Doo had been right. She didn’t need Charlene. Charlene didn’t love her. And she could take care of herself. She didn’t need a play mother. She didn’t need any mother at all. She understood now how to keep away the bad things, the ghosts, the past, and it was not by fear. It was by force.

At 3 a.m., she stood in front of the abandoned group home. She waved at Doo, who was lying at peace in Gardener’s attic. An empty fuel can dangled from Gaia’s fingers.

Wrongs did not correct themselves. Someone had to make the decision to fix things. People could not live their lives the whole time expecting things to happen; people had to make things happen. Cold gasoline had to be spilled deliberately, dousing the ground, the walls. A match, struck in the dark, had to be dropped in a shallow puddle of fuel. And the girl, the one in the wrinkled black dress, would not run away yet. She had to watch as the scorching flames licked and devoured the home. Ladies Mile Road had been a haven, a place where women felt safest. This building had mocked that history and tainted the whole neighborhood.

Texas Beach by Dennis Danvers

Texas Beach

He lies sprawled facedown in the water just short of the beach as if he tried to swim across the James and came up short. I turn him over, pull his upper body out of the water, then discover his lower torso hasn’t quite turned with the rest of him. He couldn’t have been swimming anywhere like this. His pelvis is crushed. He’s dark, probably Mexican or Guatemalan. He has on one battered leather garden glove, on his right hand. His left hand is bent at an odd angle, and a bone protrudes from his left forearm.

I throw up in the river and call 911.

I’m at Texas Beach, I tell them, on the water. There’s a dead man here. They tell me to stay with him. I say I will. That’s what I need. To sit with a dead man. I’ve come down here to wallow in grief. My old dog whose favorite haunt this was when she was alive died a couple of days ago, and I’ve been pretty much useless ever since. I was almost on top of the dead man before I realized what I was looking at. It’s early Thursday, the sun just coming up. I haven’t slept much.

His feet are still in the water. He’s wearing heavy, oil-stained work boots, almost cracked. His jeans have ridden up on his oddly pale shins. Something floats out of the top of one of the boots, and I grab it before it drifts off. A wood chip. I put it in my pocket. It could be evidence of something. I pull him the rest of the way out of the water. More chips spill out as the jeans catch on the sand and unfurl, covering his shins.

When I moved to Richmond from Texas twenty years ago, I missed seeing brown faces. Richmond was a town in black and white. That’s changed since NAFTA, like the rest of the country. When I was a kid walking across the bridge into Juárez with my parents, there’d be kids my age standing in the tarnished water of the Rio Grande, their hands uplifted for pennies tossed from the bridge. This man, the dead man, has gray temples, crow’s feet. He could be my age, sixty. He could’ve been one of those kids half a century ago.

I wonder how he ended up here — not in Richmond, I understand those economic realities well enough — but here, washed up on the shore of Texas Beach, almost broken in half. I wonder if he was the victim of a hit and run. I wonder if he was murdered. When the sun shines upon his face, I take pictures of him from several angles.

I sit with him another fifteen minutes, absorbing what I can. I’ve probably disturbed the body too much already. I want to look in his pockets, but I resist. They appear to be empty.

Pretty soon there’s a crowd. I hear one of the guys tending to the body telling another to be careful because “his midsection’s smashed up pretty bad.” The cop who’s going to question me keeps me waiting while he gives the relevant facts over the phone to some anxious superior somewhere: a presumed illegal, no identification, appears to have died elsewhere of undetermined causes. He ends with, “Yes sir, I will, sir,” repeated several times like a ritual response.

Most everyone else has gone with the body back through the woods and over the bridge spanning the tracks and the canal, up a steep trail to the parking lot. Off in the distance you can hear someone shouting, “Watch it! Watch it! Watch it!” We’re standing on the beach beside where I found the body.

The cop asks me what I know, and I tell him. I tell him about the wood chips. He doesn’t seem particularly interested. “Do you think it’s a homicide?” I ask.

“We haven’t ruled it out. We plan an immediate autopsy to determine cause of death. We don’t want any idle speculation in the press.”

“What happens if it is homicide?”

“Since we don’t know who the man was, the investigation would be difficult. We hope someone will come forth with information, of course. It’s not likely in my experience, with cases like these, but you never know.”

“Cases like these?”

“Victims from the illegal immigrant community. They fear bringing any scrutiny upon themselves. Understandable. Times like these. To tell you the truth, I doubt anything will come of it. We’ve got nothing to go on.”

Times like these. I suppose that phrase means the strident debate over “illegals,” as if that’s the single quality that matters. I would share with him what I think of these times, but what point is there telling a cop what you think of the law? He’s only entitled to one opinion. In the silence between us, I hear the river. It’s never completely silent down by the river. Dog and I used to sit on the beach and listen, or maybe for her it was the smells. Whatever it was, it always made her smile.

I walk home across Byrd Park where dog used to retrieve Frisbee, ball, stick, anything, until she got too old. I imagine, if she were here, I’d talk it over with her. She’d agree, I imagine, that I can’t just let this thing go. She had a highly developed sense of fair play and a good heart. Concern for the law, not so much: no dogs are allowed in Byrd Park. The signs are everywhere, right next to the ones fantasizing about the speed limits. A few blocks away is a drug-free zone, in case you’re in the market.

By the time I get home, I’m pissed off. Nothing to go on? Why isn’t a dead man enough to go on? Anger seems to take the edge off the grief.

I sit in front of my computer and try to write for a couple of hours with a negative word count of 325. I quit while I’m behind. I call a former crime reporter I’m friendly with. He was recently downsized in the local newspaper’s successful attempt to make itself even more fluffy and irrelevant than before, while retaining its essential reactionary character, a task I would’ve thought impossible. I ask him if he can find out what the autopsy turns up. He calls the dead man “Juan Doe.” Ha-ha. He’s kind of a macho jerk, but a good reporter.

He calls back Friday evening. Usually dog and I would be out walking. I’m just sitting around thinking about that. My wife’s upstairs in bed, crying or sleeping.

He tells me about the dead man: “Crushed by something big, probably a tree, causing massive trauma. He was dead before he went in the water. Accidental death. The tree did it. Case closed.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“The wheels of justice, my friend.”

“How did he get in the water, when he was pinned under a tree with massive trauma?”

“Undetermined. The river did it. But he died on dry land, and he died slow. Somewhere between forty-five minutes and ninety minutes between trauma and death. He bled out. Within twenty-four hours of when you found him, probably less.”

“The river level hasn’t changed in a week.”

“Nobody wants this one. It’s got a bad smell to it. This way it goes away. Another illegal dies in a work-related accident. Tough break. Adios.”

Sunday morning I’m back at Texas Beach. Dog and I used to go upriver from here all the time. About a half-mile up, the outflow from the canal cuts off easy passage. The rocks are slippery as hell, so you can either trespass on the railroad tracks or wade in the shallows. It’s chilly, so I illegally trespass. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but I suspect the dead man was dumped in the water somewhere on the north bank and floated down to Texas Beach. I guess I’m looking for the killer tree. Then maybe I’ll interrogate the beavers who chewed him out from under the killer tree and dragged him to the water after the muskrats emptied his pockets.

This is the wildest stretch of the park, spectacular towering pines, sycamores, oaks, and hickories. Woody Woodpecker and his girlfriend swoop through here often. It’s just a narrow strip of land sandwiched between the James and the CSX tracks. The old Kanawha Canal runs on the other side of the tracks, cutting off easy access. Dog and I spent many a wilderness hour here. I reach the end of park property, just opposite the three-mile canal locks and the old pumphouse, which have their own park.

Unfortunately, the only way to proceed west is to continue trespassing across the tracks. There’s a break in the fence, familiar to dog and me, a short jog away. She hadn’t been able to make the dash in a while with her stiff hind legs, and it turns out the fence has been repaired. I jog a little farther and scramble up the embankment into Pumphouse Park. The always short-handed Richmond police used to have undercover cops working the park looking to entrap gay men back before the Supreme Court decided homosexuality isn’t illegal after all. Amnesty for nature. What is the world coming to? Sunday morning, there’s nobody around but dog walkers, and they won’t care.

The canal continues west from the park all the way to the water treatment plant, the old towpath alongside it. It’s not clear to me who owns the canal and the towpath. They belong to history would be a truly Richmond sentiment. CSX, however, seems to be the ones putting up the No Trespassing signs. There’s a verse of “This Land Is Your Land” not sung much around the campfire that points out there’s two sides to such signs, the side saying nothing being the one belonging to you and me. I wanted to quote that neglected verse as an epigraph in a novel of mine a few years back, but I was told I’d have to pay the owners a few hundred bucks or it would be illegal. Woody Guthrie was dead by then. I’m sure he would’ve been amused at the ironies.

Stretches are overgrown with greenbriers, but I’ve brought a folding handsaw and gloves. Dog hated greenbriers and slunk along reluctantly when I’d get one of these bushwhacking urges, but slink along she did, through damn near anything. Dogged, they call it.

By the time I pass under the spectacular railroad bridge Richmond likes well enough to use on its logo, the worst of the greenbriers have thinned out. I’ve reached the limits of any exploration dog and I ever made. Before 9/11 my wife and I paddled a canoe up the canal, right through the water treatment plant. With a couple of portages we made it the length of the canal. Land passage is trickier, especially with a dog, but I’m dogless now, so I persist. The way becomes increasingly obscure and likely even more illegal, but I’m determined to find the truth, if not necessarily eager to confess how I get there.

I smell it first, the scent of fresh cut wood. A dozen trees of various sizes are scattered about like jackstraws. It doesn’t take long to figure out why. A house as grand as its view of the James stands on the bank above me. These trees were in the way. There’ve been a couple of cases in recent years like this: rich folks on either side of the river cutting down trees to get the view they paid for, willing to pay the fine and repent, claiming ignorance of the law. The rich don’t read the paper apparently. You see, it’s illegal to fuck with the watershed like that. Who better to do an illegal job than an illegal?

Every level of the house has a grand balcony of some sort. Windows gleam in the sun. All empty. No eyes at home. Maybe they’re looking to heaven in some slate-roofed church. I climb among the fallen trees. There’s sawdust everywhere. I approach a fallen sycamore trunk lying flat that comes up to my chest. About ten yards from the water, a hollow has been dug out of the sandy soil beneath it. I stare into the shallow recess, and I can hear the shovels hitting the dirt to make this hole with quick, frantic strokes. I buried dog in our tiny backyard. It’s probably illegal. I fought with my wife about it. She was probably right. I can’t say it’s actually delivered on the promised closure I’ve heard others say it gave them. Maybe I don’t want closure.

I crawl into the hole to see the underside of the sycamore, like a beached white whale, and there’s blood, has to be, soaked into the bark. The tree indeed did it. There are at least four distinct shoe tracks on the beach, not counting mine. There’s a furrow through the sand to the water. A beaver maybe, or a man’s heels. In the grass beside the furrow, I find an ordinary work glove like the dead man was wearing. A left. The river had an accomplice.

It doesn’t take long to find out who owns the house. I even have a nice Google Map photo of the place from space taken back when there were trees along the river. Naturally, I’ve heard of the guy. If you’re rich enough to have a big place on the river, chances are you’ve made a ripple. This guy’s more like a deep current. Lately he’s been riding that current right into the legislature. Illegals are his hot-button issue. His TV ad promising he’ll get tough on illegals has him in front of St. John’s Church where Patrick Henry made his treasonous speech.

I call up the cop who questioned me, leave several messages. I’m sitting in the backyard beside dog’s grave, drinking a beer, when he finally calls me back Monday evening. I tell him what I’ve found out. He tries to talk me out of it meaning anything.

“What about the glove?”

“And what links the glove to the victim?”

“The matching glove on the victim?”

“There was no glove on the victim.”

“What are you talking about? I saw it. There was a glove on his right hand.”

“I’m telling you. I’ve got the file right here in front of me, and there’s no glove.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you whose house it was right off.”

There’s a silence I take to mean I’m supposed to think he’s offended. “I assure you we will investigate as we deem appropriate. I suggest you leave this matter to the proper authorities. And I remind you that trespassing on private property is a serious offense and potentially dangerous to the trespasser.”

He hangs up.

I check the photos I took of the dead man. I must’ve thought I was doing a portrait study or a mug shot. None of them show his right hand.

Next morning I’m at the corner of the Lowe’s parking lot where I’ve seen brown men gathering looking for work. A dozen or so guys cycle through, hired by circling SUVs and pickups with law-abiding citizens behind the wheel. I show the workers pictures of the dead man, talk to them in my awkward, rusty Spanish. They’re nice to me, patient. They admire my white beard. Señor Barbas one of them calls me. Mr. Whiskers. I figure they think I’m a cop, INS, or a crazy street person, but I hang around anyway, boring them with stories about my travels in Mexico.

Another man, however, who’s been in Richmond awhile, gives me the nickname that sticks. “General Lee,” he says. “El hombre a caballo.” The man on horseback. We’re only blocks from the statue, and he isn’t the first to note the resemblance, especially if I haven’t been eating enough fiber or I’ve just watched what passes for the evening news. I was once mistaken for a Lee reenactor while walking past the Confederate Chapel on my way out of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The city’s full of memorials to the leaders of the armed rebellion against the legal authority of the United States — the same one nation under God indivisible that the devoted admirers of those memorials like to wax pious about with a mystifying lack of irony.

The conversation turns to politics. They have questions about the Civil War. Mexicans understand revolutions, revolutionaries. They’re curious why the losers got the statues. It’s complicated, I tell them. Fortunately, they understand class and race too.

I get a few odd glances from the people looking for workers. A neighbor from a few blocks away whose name I can’t recall spots me, and he seems genuinely alarmed to see me sitting on the fence with the Mexicans. I approach to reassure him or to offer to do light carpentry, I’m not sure which. He only knows me because dog and I used to walk by his house, but she hadn’t been able to make it that far in over a year.

“How’s your dog?” he asks me. Of course he’s going to ask me. Everyone’s going to ask me. He just happens to be the first.

“She died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“She lived a good life.”

He tosses his head toward the workers. “You doing research for a story or something?”

“We were just talking about the Civil War. Can’t become a true Richmonder, become assimilated as it were, without talking some Civil War trash, right?”

It’s supposed to be a joke, but he doesn’t crack a smile. “Do any of these guys do tile work?”

I get out of the way of commerce. Antonio, who’s hung around for the whole General Lee gringo show and looked stunned when I first showed him the pictures of the dead man, asks how old my dog was. “Quince,” I say. Fifteen.

“My oldest sister,” he says in English. “She have a dog. In Kansas City. She crazy about that dog.”

I give him the pictures of the dead man. I’ve written my phone number on the back. “I found him, okay? I pulled him out of the river. I have to do something. Maybe you know someone who knew him. Maybe someone else will know.”

As I walk home through the Fan, the word sticks in my mind, a quick, stabbing chant, quince, quince, quince. When I get home there’s a message from my ex-reporter friend who kay-aked over to see the site only to find there’d been a bonfire, still smoldering. Teens, they’re saying, drinking, getting out of hand, or maybe homeless. Or illegals. Damn them all to hell!

I walk through the house with a garbage bag, gathering up every tennis ball, veterinary prescription bottle, squeaky toy, busted leash, food dish, rawhide, etc., getting down on hands and knees if necessary until I’m sure I’ve found them all, then I put the bag in the trash can in the alley.

My wife returns home from work desolate and exhausted from having to hold it together all day at some inane training about terrorism. We have a quick dinner, narrate the fragile bones of our days, and go to bed early. She wants to be more engaged by my story of trying to help the dead man, but neither one of us has anything left. “Be careful,” she says, and falls asleep. I lie awake awhile and finally get out of bed.

A little after midnight my phone rings, and I take it. I’m at my computer, staring at the screen, at the Google photo of a time when the dead man was still alive. It’s Antonio with an address out Jeff Davis Highway, a trailer park. Can I come now? Some of the people I need to talk to just got off work. Others have to go in early. Two men are arguing in the background in rapid-fire Spanish too faint and fast for me to track. Sure, I say.

It’s a grim, tired place, but affordable. If it has a name, I don’t see it. There’s a certain coziness about the old trailers crammed in close together, the sounds of TVs and radios, cooking smells. I roll through slow, my General Lee beard must look like Casper floating by. A woman watches me pass through a tiny trailer window. She must be bent over her kitchen sink. At number seventeen, several somber men are waiting for me. We go inside where there are several more men and a single woman packed into what is likely the largest living room in the park. The men whose voices I recognize from the phone continue their argument. Not everybody thinks inviting me was such a great idea. Enough, several say. Let the man speak. So I tell my story. They’re not taking any chances on my Spanish. A woman named Irayda translates.

Then they tell her their story, and Irayda tells it to me, though I get the gist in Spanish. They were working with Felix — Felix is the dead man — when the man who hired them — the man who lived in the big house up above — showed up to hurry them. People were coming to his house, and he didn’t want anyone to see them working, but it was a big job and dangerous because there were some large trees and not much room to get out of the way if anything went wrong.

The big white tree came crashing down on Felix while the man from the house was there shouting at them. He told them not to call 911 or they’d all be arrested and deported, and they could dig Felix out and take him to the hospital just as fast themselves. They started digging. They didn’t have enough shovels for everyone. One of the men went back to the truck to get some more, but they couldn’t get Felix out before he died. The man said he’d call 911 after they took off, so they wouldn’t be arrested. They had left the man alone with Felix’s body Wednesday night. Then I showed up at Lowe’s the following Tuesday with his picture. Antonio stayed with Felix’s son when he first came to Richmond. His son was killed in a robbery last year.

Irayda says, “They appreciate what you’ve done for Felix, but they would like you to stop now. If it was only them, it would be different, but they must consider the welfare of others — their families, their neighbors, their children. They know whose house it is. Things are hard enough already, the way things have been lately. You understand?”

I wish I didn’t, but I do, so I don’t give her any argument. I shake hands all around. She leaves when I do, driving to a more affluent part of town. Probably here legally, well-educated, from a prosperous family back home in Mexico or Guatemala — maybe she knew Felix, or maybe she just wanted to help.

I miss my turn, or something inside me refuses to take it, and I head for the house of the man promising on the radio to keep America safe for Americans or some such gibberish. I twist and turn through streets all named with a bit of the lord-and-manor about them. Once you get anywhere close to the river-fronting properties, the roads are all private. If I hadn’t pored over the Google photo, I don’t think I would’ve known which one to take. I roll right up front. I’m surprised there’s not a fence or something. Maybe there’s a virtual fence, like the one in Arizona. The lights are on. Someone’s home.

And quite a home it is, stretched to make room for windows on one side and plenty of pavement on the other. Several cars much nicer than my Civic are parked here. They’re all wearing the host’s bumper sticker on their ass. Sounds like a party going on, people talking and laughing over Cuban jazz. Campaigning must make for some late nights, or maybe he just can’t sleep. The air is heavy with the smell of charred wood. Must put a damper on the festivities.

I button up my shirt and tuck it in, ring the bell, and smile into the camera. General Lee calling. The candidate himself opens the door, and I tell him I’m a constituent wanting to discuss the issues. He has to shake my offered hand, an old white man, and I hang on, pumping his hand, so honored don’t you know, herding him inside. He can’t stop me. It’s not nice to body block the elderly. There are a dozen or so folks, still all dressed up for a fund-raiser, standing around having a nightcap with the candidate. He has to make nice with an audience present. Virginia politicians know all too well a cell phone can bring down a senator.

A couple of big-chested fellows are eyeing me. Security obviously. Can’t have too much of that. Everyone else is watching to see if I’ll be amusing. There’s a black lab sitting at the end of a long empty sofa. It’s porcelain. Behind it is a wall of windows. “Would you look at the view?” I say. It’s a dark night. The room is lit up bright. All there is to see is a bunch of white people reflected in the glass against a black backdrop, like a painting on black velvet of white-faced dogs playing poker.

“You can’t really see anything with all the lights on, I’m afraid,” says my host, chuckling amiably, professionally.

“It’s always something, isn’t it? Trees. Lives. Bright lights. I just came by to tell you I’m not voting for you. I don’t like your stand on the issues — immigrant labor and watershed management in particular.”

The two security guys have been moving in until they’re standing on either side of us like we’re about to huddle. One reaches inside his jacket and keeps his hand there. His right.

The candidate turns off his bright smile, so I can see inside, where he’s actually a good deal meaner than he might first appear to be. But I already knew that. “I’m afraid it’s late Mr....?”

“Lee.”

“Mr. Lee. Perhaps if you’d come by my office we could discuss the matter further.”

I have to let it go. I have to consider the welfare of others. “I’d rather not.” I give it one last look, and they all follow my gaze, all of us glancing back. Mr. Whiskers looks like a faux full moon in the foyer. “Killer view.”

He’s standing right beside me. He makes a little grunt like I hit him in the gut. Nothing like the sound he’d make if I actually hit him. Nothing like the sound Felix must’ve made when several tons of tree came crashing down on him. But something.

I show myself out. The security guys watch me drive away, back to the public roads on the other side of a virtual fence, keeping the borders secure.

When the key turns in the lock, I still expect to hear dog struggling to her feet. Before she died I thought this silence would be better than listening to her gradual decline. Not so. Not yet, a little over a week now.

My wife’s up, watching a muted television. Wal-Mart is cutting prices.

“How you doing?” she asks.

“Better, I think. What about you?”

“Someone asked at work today how my dog was doing.”

“What did you say?”

“I said she had a good life.”

“That’s what I said too.”

“Did you find out anything about the dead man?”

“His name was Felix.”

I sit down beside her, and we hold each other in the silence and manage not to cry.