Avon makes the turn onto his street, feeling a blister coming up on his left heel where the hole sits in the sock. The sun is now midday hot, and he’s sweating in rivulets down his back and sides. He lost about ten pounds this time in the joint, and as he steps onto the cracked front walk of the house, the string holding his pants up gives out, so when he reaches the screen door, he’s got the sack with his valuables in one hand and the waistband of his pants in the other. Behind the screen, the front door is open. He can hear the TV going full blast inside, sounds like the Home Shopping Network. He gives the metal frame of the screen door a kick.
“Open the damn door,” he shouts. “I gotta piss.”
At the end of a short hall he sees Girlie’s head pop out from behind the kitchen doorway.
“I thought you were getting out tomorrow,” she says in her accented English.
“Well, I got out today. Hurry up, woman, ’fore I piss my trousers.”
Girlie comes to the door, drying her hands with a teal dish towel. She thinks blue is the color of luck. So everything in the house is one shade of blue or another.
“You got skinny,” she says.
He pushes past her, dropping his sack on the linoleum and hurrying to the john. Girlie tsks. She picks up his bag, goes through it, nosy as ever. Down the hall, Avon pisses with the door open, the sound of it—rounded, masculine—fills the small house. She tsks again. Men are such animals, really. Even the so-called nice ones.
She rifles through his meager possessions, hairbrush, playing cards, two pairs of worn briefs.
“Get yer nose outta my crap,” he tells her, coming down the hall, one hand holding up his pants.
“Yeah, yeah,” she says, and drops the sack on a wooden side table with a built-in lamp.
Avon comes up behind her, cups her left breast with his hand, and presses up against her.
“The king has returned from battle,” he tells her.
“I got adobo on the stove,” she says. “And I didn’t shave a few days. You want special treatment, you gonna have to wait.”
He nuzzles her neck, smelling of sweat and beer. “I like you hairy,” he says.
She shrugs, leads him to the bedroom. She’s not in the mood, but when has that ever mattered? Besides, he’s been locked away for months. He’ll pop quick. Avon follows, holding her trailing hand, his other hand on his pants, shuffling—scrawny, white-blond hair clipped close to the skin in a flattop—and for a moment he looks like a boy again.
Freedom.
Later, they sit at the kitchen table, drinking Jack Daniel’s coolers—they both like the watermelon punch—and eating chicken straight out of the pot.
“You keeping oil in the car?” he asks.
“One time,” she tells him, “and now forever we gotta talk about this.”
On TV, Fox News is reporting on some kind of Senate committee hearings. Avon doesn’t pay much attention to American politics now that he knows what’s really going on. But he glances at the screen while he eats. A woman in a suit behind the big table is being grilled by some subcommittee （Justice?）。 The chyron under her name reads JUDGE MARGOT BARR-NADIR, and she’s talking about why she’s fit to serve on the Supreme Court. The chyron changes. The words Daughter missing 4 weeks appear where her name used to be.
Avon opens another JD cocktail. He tells Girlie about his cell mates—the dumb one and the stupid one—and how lousy the food was. She half listens, texting her sisters, her friends, her employees all in a constant stream. It’s 7:00 a.m. in the Philippines, and everybody’s up and writing.
“Of course I’m worried,” Judge Nadir says. “I’m her mother. But this isn’t a hearing about my daughter. This is a hearing about whether or not I should be a justice on the Supreme Court, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your question to that topic.”
Avon drops a chicken bone on his plate. “What’s she going on about?” he asks.
“The babies,” says Girlie, “all everybody’s babies. They just kill themselves.”
“What babies? They’re dying in their cribs?”
“No, stupid. The boys and girls. Teenage. They kill themselves.” She makes a gun of her hand and presses it to her temple.
He grits his teeth. She should know better than to call him stupid. “Who? Where?”
“Everyplace, they think. Connie at the shop say her cousin dead this weekend.”
Avon scowls. “Sounds like they found another wild-goose chase to keep us from thinking about the real tragedy. Where are the bodies? That’s what we should be asking.”