Late in the Standoff Read online

  He remembered the day he’d bought them for her, a chilly November morning in the Village over near Rice. A girl had set a basket full of kittens on a sidewalk outside a florist’s shop. Her cardboard sign said FREE. “Oh Danny,” Anna Lia gasped, picking up a tortie. “Danny, look.” He asked the girl where she’d got them. She replied that her mama cat had given birth last month, but her father wouldn’t let her keep them. Danny insisted on paying her ten bucks apiece for the pair that Anna Lia prized. “Maybe you can buy yourself some flowers,” he told the girl. Anna Lia was touched. Her eyes glistened, and her legs pressed, warm, against the backs of his knees.

  Now Robi half-purred, half-growled at Danny’s hand. “Poor critter,” he muttered. “You don’t know what’s going on, do you? Well, join the club.”

  “Libbie found them in a shelter,” Betty said. “Carla told me you weren’t in the mood to feed them, so I’ve been doing it.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Thank you.”

  “Mostly, though, they just like to hide.”

  “I guess they had a pretty big scare.” Danny stood and brushed the wrinkles from his pants. “Are you okay, taking care of them a while longer? I’m not sure, yet, how to divvy up Anna Lia’s stuff …”

  “I’m okay. I have to clean that mess in the kitchen before Sissy sees it.”

  “Well, let me give you a hand.” He stepped into the room, an apple green rectangle with dark red floor tiles. Kitty litter, peppered with hard little shit-pellets, dusted the corner by the cat box. “Got a broom?” he asked Betty. She leaned against the stove. “A dustpan?”

  “In the pantry over there.” She giggled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’ve never seen a man do that.”

  “Sweep a floor?”

  “Edgar spills stuff all the time, but he won’t clean it up.”

  “Carla’s boyfriend? That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “I’ll bet she’s with him now.” Betty made a face. “He was making music in Galveston, but he came back today. He plays guitar.” She covered her ears.

  “You don’t like him?” Danny emptied the mess into a waist-high garbage pail in the pantry.

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I only met him a couple times, but he seemed to me kind of a bum,” Danny said.

  “A bum!” Betty brayed. “A bum! That’s right! Bum bum bum!”

  Danny laughed with her. He liked the way she abandoned herself so fast to her moods. He put away the broom. “Okay. Tell Carla I came by, will you?”

  “I will, if you’ll tell me you can’t stand tulips.”

  “I can’t stand tulips.”

  She smiled.

  “See you at the funeral Tuesday?”

  “Oh.” She plucked at the folds of her dress. “I don’t think so. I don’t leave the house, much.”

  “I see,” Danny said. “All those people?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I understand. I’ve been feeling that way, too.” He brushed kitty litter from his hands. “Well. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime. Thanks for taking care of the cats, Betty. It’s a big help to me now.”

  “You’re welcome.” She moved toward him, then away. “Can I ask you …

  “What is it?”

  “How do you … I mean, if you feel like I do …?” She spoke softly and with great effort.

  “How do I make myself go out?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just … I don’t know, I remember there’s lots of good things too. Trees and flowers—sorry, not tulips, okay? Clouds and things.”

  She licked her lips.

  “It’s not so hard, really. You ought to try it. Want to go somewhere?”

  “No. No.”

  “Just around the block?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Okay. Let me know if you ever do, all right?”

  “All right.”

  “It’s the least I could do, after your help with the critters.”

  When he pulled away in his car, she was still standing in the doorway.

  He hadn’t eaten since yesterday, a Whopper and fries, and he wondered if he should go home and get something. No. The Continental Arms made him shudder. A young couple had rented Anna Lia’s apartment already. Yesterday evening, they’d parked a U-Haul at the bottom of the stairs, begun unloading chairs and lamps, a mattress and box springs, a brand-new couch.

  Something else: he wasn’t ready for Smitts. Not yet. Practice, he thought. Steady your aim. He wouldn’t get caught a second time, off-guard.

  He should check with Simtex soon. The week before Anna Lia died he’d scheduled another Austin run. Maybe you should go ahead, he thought. Skip the funeral. Cruise on out to Barton Springs, kick back, grab a chicken fried steak at Shady Grove.

  Maybe Betty would like to tag along. Set her up with some bourbon or a couple shots of tequila. Then show her why the world was worth a look.

  On Telephone Road, he zipped past car lots and honky tonks. Black women in slit skirts smoked cigarettes on crumbling yellow sidewalks. Anna Lia used to talk of the devil whenever Danny drove her through neighborhoods like this. She’d been raised to believe that the devil was an actual presence in the world, leading men and women astray. When she’d had her abortion in Rome, she felt Lucifer had sunk his claws into her womb. Three years ago—four?—she’d told Danny she no longer believed the church’s teachings. But she never failed to whisper, “It’s the devil,” whenever she saw poor people on the streets, shattered houses, ruined schools.

  Danny turned past a boarded-up store. Surely old Satan lives over here, he thought, sitting in a rocker on his porch, plucking at a wicked old git-box.

  Anna Lia had a dash of evil in her. Oh yes. You could see it when she danced. A gleam in her eye. A challenge. Take me if you can. Lord, her hips and legs! Shimmying to blazing salsa trumpets, those sweaty summer nights at Carla’s. “Get me another drink,” she’d croon, draping her arms on him, grinding her pelvis into his groin. She’d bite his lip, then pull away, laughing. He’d run to the kitchen to fetch her a beer; when he returned, she’d be in command of the room, swaying in the center of the floor, her head back, her hair a yellow pinwheel.

  One moonlit night—castanets clopping like horses, crickets cheeping through the window screens—he’d stood watching her, holding her beer, when Edgar sidled close to him. “My friend, looks to me like she’s way too much for just one man,” he said. Her shoulders were bare in the snapping candlelight, and her long neck, exquisite, was the color of toasted bread.

  He remembered driving her home after Carla’s parties. He’d undress her, then tuck her into bed. Asleep, she was as soft as the critters.

  He pulled into a Wendy’s drive-thru. The high school girl at the cashier’s window told him to have a nice day. She wore a silly red hat.

  Nibbling bland fries, he passed Discomundo and Chimichanga. He felt a pang for Marie but didn’t stop. Past Hobby Airport and the pawn shops. In The Silencer’s parking lot, six or seven men in camo suits milled around a pair of jeeps. Sunday soldiers, playing at war. Danny slowed and searched the group but didn’t see the Smitts brothers. “Hey buddy, what the hell are you gawking at?” yelled one of the men.

  Danny raised his pistol. “A bunch of goddam militia geeks, that’s what!”

  They jumped behind their jeeps. A beer can exploded on the pavement. Danny hit the gas. Within minutes, the city filled his rearview. The soily smell of pine trees. Grilled meat, from pits behind roadside smokehouses. Seagulls circled the freeway.

  On Houston’s northern edge, shoddy businesses ringed the woods. Auto salvage yards, massage parlors, bail bondsmen, Sprayfoam. Wasn’t it Shakespeare, something he’d read in school a million years ago—Hamlet? Macbeth?—where the woods began to move? A military threat? If that happened here, Houston was doomed. Its first line of defense was aching old men in rickety shacks, bitter from trying to make a living: “Go ahead, take the damn place!”

&
nbsp; He tossed the burger bags out the window. They rolled across the road. He switched on his headlights. On his radio, another white-boy preacher: “Jee-sus’ finger moo-ving through the land, nudging the mighty Blessed Ones.”

  Just past Chimichanga, Libbie turned the corner and drove the half-block to Hugh’s apartment. It was dark. Of course he was still with his girls. She parked by the curb. What time did his daughters go to bed? Sometimes, too, he stayed late talking to his ex, working out money or scheduling. The woman had just moved back to Houston from her parents’ house in New Orleans. She was unemployed, a drain on Hugh. She’d be part of the marriage package too.

  Libbie reached into her car pocket and found a scrap of paper.

  The fact that he’d been right about Danny’s gun made her miss him fiercely. “Call me,” she scribbled. She dropped the note in his mail slot. The night air felt good on her face, and she walked to the corner, just to breathe.

  When he’d told her about Danny, he wasn’t insensitive to Danny’s grief; he was expressing his fear for her. In her shock and exhaustion, she’d misread every nuance. Making love with him, she’d been so detached. Was she going to wreck everything, right before her wedding?

  Tattooed teens straggled up Richmond Street, and a pair of older women in short skirts. Libbie took them to be prostitutes. Last year, when Danny opened Discomundo here for Anna Lia, southeast Montrose had seemed clean and prosperous. Small businesses were developing on all the sidestreets. Now it looked shabby, out of luck.

  How did neighborhoods die? AIDS? Price wars? Greedy landlords? As soon as you got chummy with one part of the city, it changed on you. She felt unmoored, as she had when she’d seen Anna Lia’s charred apartment.

  “Howdy, sugar,” said a woman in a tight blue skirt. She leaned against a FOR LEASE sign in front of a dry cleaning store. “You adventurous?”

  “No, thanks,” Libbie said.

  “You might like it, sweets.”

  Libbie moved on. A Circle K sign flickered down the block. A white minivan slowed to inspect the woman. “How many black-owned businesses profited from the Juneteenth Celebration?” a voiced barked from its radio. “Do the math. White Daddy making a killing off’n us, while our brothers getting killed.”

  Libbie crossed the street, unable to walk past Discomundo’s door. She felt—imagined?—a cold draft from the entryway. A year from now, would Anna Lia’s dream still exist? Could Marie run the place on her own? Would Danny lose interest?

  The minivan chugged by her with the woman in back. She stuck her tongue out at Libbie.

  Red lights lined Chimichanga’s sea-green eaves. A smell of peppers, melted cheese. Libbie saw a cook step out of the kitchen, pull a cigarette from his pocket, and try half-a-dozen times to get his lighter to work.

  9

  Nicholas imagined Anna Lia sitting at the table in her dark apartment, following instructions in her bomb manual, placing her fingers just so. Then something—a noise from outside, a fleeting thought, a sting of jealousy, a whine from one of the cats—and slip, clack. Shrapnel in the heart.

  He taped together another cardboard box and began dumping his knives into it.

  “Nick? Nicholas, what the hell are you doing?” his brother asked, standing in the bedroom doorway, popping the tab on a Silver Bullet.

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “You’re not getting rid of your shit?”

  “Tomorrow I want you to take this stuff to The Silencer.”

  “I may want to keep it. Hell, the cops said—”

  “I don’t want it around anymore.”

  “You’re flipping, bro.”

  “Fuck you. Leave me alone.” His thigh throbbed. He swallowed six Advil.

  From his window he could see the new balcony railing. A woman opened the sliding-glass door. Not the woman he wanted to see. A stranger. The new tenant. From now on, he thought, tossing a leg strap into the box, they’re all the wrong damn woman.

  10

  When Libbie woke Monday morning, sunlight glinted off the wine glasses she and Hugh had left on the night table the other day. She smelled him on her pillow.

  Lonely, mildly lustful, she put on a bathrobe and slippers, walked downstairs, and called him. No answer. She tried his office. Maybe he’d stepped out to grab a bagel somewhere, though that wasn’t like him.

  She switched on her coffee machine then graded a few more exams—last night, after giving up on Hugh, she had come home and whipped through several of the tests. With steady attention now, she could get them ready by her ten o’clock class.

  She dressed quickly, sipping her coffee. Before leaving the house, she tried Hugh again.

  On her way to school she stopped by the Continental Arms. She hadn’t seen or heard from Danny all weekend. Carla had been a trouper. “You’ve got plenty on your plate, with the wedding,” she’d told Libbie on Friday. “You need to spend time with Hugh. I’ll handle the rest of the funeral arrangements and look after Danny. You’ve done enough, okay?”

  But had she driven Hugh away? She stared into her rearview, searching for the box with her dress; in the recent flurry, she still hadn’t moved it.

  Danny’s car wasn’t there. A handsome couple emerged from Anna Lia’s apartment. They locked the door, laughing and talking. They kissed.

  Libbie circled the lot and was about to leave when she heard a man shout her name. She wrenched her parking brake, lowered her window, and stuck her head out. “Danny?” Instead, Nicholas Smitts shambled up to her van. How did he know her name? Anna Lia must have mentioned it to him. He wore ripped camouflage pants and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt. He ran his hand through his hair. “Listen, I’m glad I saw you. I wanted to tell you … your friend Clark, he’s about to fuck up.”

  Libbie didn’t answer.

  He leaned against her door. “He’s acting like he wants to come after me or something. You probably know all this. I’m just saying, if he tries anything, he’s going to end up hurt. Tell him that. I won’t mess him up, if I can help it, but I can’t vouch for my brother and his pals. I just want all this to go away. You listening?”

  Feigning indifference, Libbie switched on her radio. Roberto’s morning show. “Here, to ease you on your way back to work, from the magical city of Barcelona, Maria del Mar Bonet.”

  “Christ,” Smitts said. “If you’re going to ignore me, ignore me. But turn that asshole off.”

  “Did you do it?” Libbie asked.

  “What, get her hot for bombs? Yeah. I guess I did.” He scratched an ear. “That’s my shit, you know, what I’m into—as a hobby. Couples share their shit. But did I buy the hardware and do all the rest? No. I respect this stuff. I’m not reckless with it. You understand me? She was fucking nuts. She needed too much. It made her crazy.”

  “You weren’t there?”

  “Jesus, how many times I gotta tell you people? No. No.”

  “I heard you. Outside. Outside Danny’s door in the middle of the night. I heard your limp. You broke a flower pot—”

  “I’ll pay for the goddam pot.”

  “What were you doing?”

  “I wanted to talk to y’all. I knew you blamed me.”

  “At three o’clock in the morning?”

  “Hell, I couldn’t sleep. I figured you couldn’t, either. I was trying to see past the curtains, if there was any lights on inside.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “Believe it or don’t, lady. I really don’t give a fuck.”

  The morning had grayed. Clouds curdled, low.

  “Listen, I feel shitty enough about what happened—though the cops don’t have a beef with me. Remember that. And I’m going to feel even worse if Clark gets his head cracked. Keep him off my back, all right? For his sake.” He thrust a hand into the van. Libbie flinched. “For the flower pot,” he said, dropping a ten in her lap. Then he turned and hobbled away.

  In her office, Libbie finished the tests. Thunder shook her window; the lig
hts flickered. Several times in the past, Anna Lia had sat here to talk about her progress as a student. Libbie felt her now, filling the empty chair on the other side of the desk. The lights blinked again.

  Carla knocked on her door. Libbie could always tell when Edgar was in town. Carla looked weary, pinched. Not that he ever harmed her physically. She would have said so. Wouldn’t she?

  “Did you see the funeral announcement?”

  “Missed it.”

  Carla handed her a page of the Chronicle. Anna Lia’s bold smile. All that stunning hair. Libbie remembered when the photo was taken one night at a party, after hours of dancing.

  Carla had arranged for a memorial service in the Religion Center, here on campus, tomorrow afternoon.

  “I don’t know where Danny is,” Carla said. “He hasn’t called me.

  “I don’t know where Hugh is, either.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “A little panicky,” Libbie admitted. “You? How’s Edgar?”

  “We had a fight last night. About Betty. The way he yells at her.” She rubbed her face. “I think we’re through.”

  “Through through?”

  Carla nodded.

  “Oh sweetie, I’m sorry.”

  “What are you going to do about Hugh?”

  Libbie shrugged. “Right now I’m going to teach a class. If I remember how.”

  “Talk later?”

  Libbie patted her arm. “Let’s.”

  Her students were noisy, excited to have her back. The classroom was hot. Thunder smacked the building. Libbie set the test-folder on the seminar table. About half the class had failed. “As you all know, second language acquisition is a difficult task,” she began stiffly. It would take her a few minutes to feel comfortable again in front of a group. “Nothing is more complex than human communication—especially across cultural divides—and you mustn’t be discouraged by the time it takes or the patience it requires. Even a misstep can be a valuable learning tool. For those of you who didn’t pass this time, there’ll be another chance, and I’ll work with you as much as I can. Please don’t be discouraged.” From the corner of her eye she saw Anna Lia. She was sitting at the far end of the table. The illusion lasted only a second—it was a Colombian girl named Luz, her light hair as curly as Anna Lia’s. Libbie shivered. “Please don’t be discouraged,” she repeated.