King of Her Desire

10

She walked around the U-Haul trailer with both hands crossed over her heart like some people do when they're heading up to take communion. Which I have to admit sort of made me a little bit queasy.

So I said, "C'mon, let's get outta here. I'm having flashbacks."

But she leaned to look at the old rusted up padlock and then stood back up and turned those big, puppy dog eyes on me.

And said, "Why?" with so much anguish in it that I couldn't answer right away.

And when I went over to put my arms around her, she grabbed me up like she was trying to make up for every bad thing that had ever happened to me in one hug.

And said, "Tell me." With her cheek pressed up against mine.

I just let her hold me until she could finally let go. And then I gave her a little smile and said, "Believe it or not, this was better than home at the time."

"How is that even possible, Shoni?"

I took her hand and led her away from that old beat up trailer.

"Dude my mother was with...he was beating us up," I said. "Me, mostly. Wanting to be the only man in the house. Almost killed me, the last time. So..."

She hugged me again, and then took my face in her hands and said, "There is absolutely no sign of anything like—you have the most...generous, loving spirit..."

I opened the passenger door and said, "If you say so."

And as I got in, she reached over and grabbed my arm and said, "I say so. And I want you to hear me."

I said, "You sound like Gerri now. With the spirit stuff," as I pulled off down the alley.

"Are you listening to me?"

"I heard you."

She sat back and sighed. Taking in all the garbage and rusty car parts and whatnot behind all the industrial buildings we were driving past.

"Life in the shadows," I said. "This is the forgotten part of the city. All cities. People drive through here...I mean, they have no idea—you see up ahead there? The piles of boxes? There's probably people living in that. There's all these little groups of people huddled up next to the railroad tracks like that. You can sleep in recycling bins, too. The big industrial kind, between the flattened down boxes. It'll keep you warm, but you have to be careful you don't get recycled. People die that way out here all the time. The drivers never get out, right? The trucks just snatch those bins up and they have no idea someone's in there."

"Oh, my God--and you know this from experience."

"When I was little we stayed outside the city, mostly," I said. "Abandoned trailers, 'way out where people had had some land and maybe lost it or something. If you look around, you can find things like that. It was safer in a way cause we had walls around us. But some of those places were so rusty and nasty that if you cut yourself on something you'd probably die of tetanus or God knows what. And you didn't know who all would show up, looking for the same thing you were. Or maybe they were there first and just went out panhandling or whatever. And then there'd be this big turf war..."

She said, "But why?" again.

And I said, "My mother...had issues. She's a good-looking woman. I mean, exceptionally good looking, like you. But she's slow, as they used to say. And some jerk knocked her up when she was, like...15. Because she didn't even know what he was doing, basically. Friend of the family. Got shamed into marrying her, but he took off and left us in this Section 8 apartment before the baby was even born. And of course, she wasn't capable of handling anything on her own, so we wound up in a shelter for single mothers for a while. But she kept letting guys in. There are rules about that in those places. But she would pretty much go with anyone who told her he'd take care of her. Only they never did."