We sat in our usual spots, not having to talk, passing the joint back and forth, letting the marijuana bathe the destroyed room in a haze. I put on Donovan.
After a while, Rita repeated, “Someone’s information. Hm.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Did you try Google? For this person’s number?” Rita asked, coughing a bit as she exhaled.
The sharpness came back. Google. Fucking duh. Panic had scrambled my brain. Of course I should do a Google search. “Rita, you’re a genius.”
“Tell that to my job,” Rita said. “They just fired me.”
“Damn, Rita,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged, stretching as she stood. “Everyone’s losing their jobs these days.”
I grabbed my laptop from the floor. Morrow, Morrow, Morrow. Now, what was his first name? The e-mails. Luke’s e-mails with the questions I was supposed to ask during our Skype calls—Luke had written the name there. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Just keep payin’ your rent on time,” she called as she opened the door. “I’ll see ya later. Come, Dante.” Dante clicked across the floor.
As the door shut, I typed. There it was. Morrow Garage, Buda, TX. If I called now, no one would answer. If I left within the hour, I’d be there at sunrise.
Luke
Cucciolo, I was saying. Cucciolo. But I was lying down and there were three suns and my mouth was made of rubber. Frankie wouldn’t turn. I needed him to turn around because they were shooting at us. We had ducked behind the jeep and they were shooting. Rooster was on the ground.
The shooting wasn’t bullets but beeps. Beeping.
But then for some reason we were back at my dad’s garage. Why were they shooting? Get them out of my dad’s garage. It was lunchtime. It wasn’t time for people to shoot at my dad and my brother. I had to get up from this bed. I had to protect them.
Rooster was taking a nap under the jeep on a red pillow. How can he sleep right now?
I couldn’t get up because the bottom half of me was a tree, a trunk where my legs should be. It was growing, cracking my skin, bark made of knives, stabbing.
I screamed because it hurt. Someone cut this tree off! I screamed.
Three suns were so bright. People were talking funny. I was, too. Cucciolo. No one was listening.
They put a piece of rubber on my face.
Blue and white and blue and white.
The tree grew again. I screamed.
“Goot, goot,” they were saying. “Ess weird goot sign.”
“Not goot,” I said, but the rubber got in the way. “Frankie.”
Frankie. Not good. Someone cut this tree off.
Frankie.
Cassie
Dads and I do not mix. Never had one, didn’t want one, didn’t need one. Didn’t like them when they verbally abused my fourth-grade rec-league soccer refs, didn’t like when they got too drunk at quincea?eras, didn’t like how they rolled their eyes at my college friends’ majors from their La-Z-Boys.
Dads and I especially did not mix when I was running off no sleep, three bites of tikka masala, and a joint with my landlady. I rumbled down the main drag of Buda, gas tank low, past the mom-and-pop stores and trucks parked in front almost as big as the buildings themselves, fast food trash skittering near the curbs. I scanned the buildings for the red-and-white sign I’d seen on the website.
When I found it, I got out, ready to knock on the door and see Luke’s brother. A brother, I’d imagined, who would be a nicer version of Luke. A younger, jumpsuited guy looking like an ensemble member of Grease, with a cherubic toddler hanging on his pant leg, who’d usher me into an office with leather chairs next to a sorority girl wife with moist eyes. They’d all listen and tell me what to do.
Instead, the garage was closed. Back in five. If it’s an emergency I’m at Morts getting coffee, a handwritten sign had read.
So I waited. I waited for five, then five more. I called the number that had called me last night in hopes there would be an update on Luke’s condition, but I couldn’t get through. I gathered my dress and sat in the middle of a cement square bordered with weeds, watching the tricked-out cars pass at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Mothers pushed kids in strollers, blowing smoke from their cigarettes away from their babies’ lungs as they complained into their phones about someone who had done them wrong. I sent a text to Toby, telling him sorry, and that I’d call him soon.
Then Luke’s dad came up the walk with a Styrofoam take-out coffee in hand. Legs up to the chest, triangle jaw, but with ghost-white hair and a stooped back. Unmistakable.