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  “Mom, please don’t do this. I came in here yesterday and you had redecorated the entire apartment. Your pupils were the size of quarters and I found a baggie of pills in your room. You had taken so much…whatever the hell it was that you were practically incoherent. First and foremost, I love you and I’m worried about you. But second…you cannot stay here if you’re using. You think I won’t kick you out on the street, but bring drugs back in here and you’ll see how wrong you are.”

  She was looking down at the table, not making eye-contact with me. When I finished talking she pulled her head up slowly and peeked out underneath her hair like a child. “I’m sorry,” she said. It was her favorite line. It was supposed to make everything magically disappear.

  “That’s a start. But I’m sorry is not good enough, Mom. You go to the meeting tonight, and promise me you will not bring drugs back in this house…or I can’t help you any longer.”

  “I don’t want to be like this,” she said. It was pathetic and no matter how angry I wanted to be, I knew she was telling the truth about that much anyways.

  “I know, Mom.” I reached over and put my hand on hers. “I don’t want you to be this way either, because I love you, okay?”

  “You’re the only one, Jessie. You’re the only one that never leaves me.” She started crying again. I just hugged her and let her cry it out. Sometimes that was all you could do. The rest of the day she acted embarrassed every time she looked at the walls and she kept apologizing. She fixed us lunch and we watched a movie together and when it was time to leave for the meeting, she didn’t complain.

  I told her we needed to take the bus because my car was having some problems. The truth was that I was worried still about Mitch. She couldn’t even remember telling me a man came by when she sobered up, much less who it was. I was also going to meet Paul after I dropped her off and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t being followed there.

  When we got off the bus I walked her to the door. She looked scared and I felt really bad leaving her. She knew that I couldn’t stay though. The meetings were confidential and if I waited for her, I’d have to sit outside in the dark.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I told her. She nodded, but she didn’t look too sure. “This is a safe place. Here,” I handed her the bus pass I bought for her and said, “Just wait right over there where it let us off. It will drop you in front of the apartment. If I’m not home when you get there, don’t let anyone in, okay? No one, Mom. Remember what I said earlier, okay?”

  “I got it,” she said. I could tell she was annoyed with me. She used to tell me I talked to her like she was a child or an idiot. I used to tell her back that if she didn’t act like a child or an idiot, I wouldn’t talk to her like she was one.

  Trying to sound more upbeat than I felt I said, “Good luck, Mom. I’ll see you at home.”

  She nodded again and turned and went inside. I stood there, feeling guilty about…I don’t even know what. I finally turned and went back over to the bus stop. When the bus came I got on it, changing buses twice before I finally got on the one that would take me to the small town where Paul’s sister and nephew were at. When I got off the bus there, Paul was waiting for me.

  “Hey,” he said, giving me a kiss before we got into his truck.

  “Hi.”

  “No problems getting here?” He was asking nicely if I made sure I wasn’t followed. I didn’t tell him that I felt like a Bond girl sneaking around from bus to bus.

  “No problems. I was really careful.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Me too.”

  We drove for about ten minutes and Paul parked his truck in the lot of a Chinese food restaurant. We went inside and he ordered take-out.

  When we got back outside and I started towards the truck he said, “We’re going to leave it here.”

  “Oh, okay.” I knew he was being careful. He took my hand and we started walking. We walked through a little town that sat not too far from the city we lived in, but looked like an entirely different world. To me it looked like it used to be a little fishing village or something. The houses and markets and even the schools were piled on top of each other, a jumble of different colors, styles and materials. One house would be made out of brick and the next would be a two-story Tudor style. There were wooden ones that looked like cottages and in the midst of it all were trees…everywhere you looked were dense green trees that seemed to almost twist out of the buildings in some spots. Some of them were leaden with unpicked fruit and gave the whole town a sickeningly sweet kind of smell. It was a strange little place, and I found it even stranger when we left the residential area and came to a whole row of what looked like abandoned buildings. It was an old strip mall, and some of the buildings looked to barely still be standing. Everything on this side of the little town looked like it had sat and been baked by the sun for decades.

  Paul led me to what looked like a gym, but a really old one. The roof was flat and made of aluminum or sheet metal. The building was wooden and painted a shade of red usually reserved for barns. The front door had a big padlock and chain on it which Paul surprisingly had the key to. He unlocked it and pushed in the double doors. I stepped into a work-out room from the 1970’s. It was almost surreal.

  “What is this place?”

  “It used to be a gym. It’s been abandoned for years…decades.”

  “Why? Why are all of these buildings empty?”

  “The town used to be self-sufficient. There was a furniture plant that employed most of the adults in town. Then in the seventies it closed down and the people who had cars either moved or got jobs in other towns. The ones who didn’t likely went on welfare…either way, the town pretty much died. It came back to life a little in the nineties, but they started re-building over there near the bus depot. They’ve never done anything with this part of town. My Sensei owns this building.”

  “Hey Uncle Paul! Did you bring food?”

  Victor was racing towards us and Paul grabbed him and pretended to throw him down on the old mat on the floor. They wrestled for a while, it was really cute. When Marie came in the room though, they stopped and both looked guilty. “Were you two wrestling again?” Neither of them said anything but the guilty look on their faces said it all. She shook her head at them and then she looked at me and smiled. “Hi Jessie. How are you?”

  “I’m good, Marie. How are you?”

  “I’m doing well, thank you. If I could get these two to settle down for five minutes. It’s like living with two five year olds. Did you get the egg-foo-yung?”

  “Man, I want to be a woman when I grow up,” Victor said.

  We all looked at him in shock and Paul said, “Why would you say that?”

  “Because when you’re a woman you get to give all the orders and decide on the food and everything.” Marie gave him a narrow eyed look and Paul laughed. I tried to keep a neutral expression but I think the smile won out.

  Marie set the food up for us on a table in the back room. They had a little refrigerator and there were three air mattresses. It looked like a pitiful place to have to live…especially with a kid. They all seemed to be doing well with it though. Marie was pleasant and Victor was funny and Paul seemed to still be riding some of his high from the fight the night before. I’d like to think it was from me too.

  After we ate and cleaned up, which pretty much consisted of throwing the paper plates and chopsticks away, Paul took my hand and said, “Come here, I want to show you something.” I followed him through another small room and he stopped at a metal ladder attached to the wall. “You’re not afraid of heights are you?”

  “No,” I said, honestly. I wasn’t so sure about a rusty old ladder connected to a wall though. I didn’t say that part out loud though so he stepped back and waited for me to go up. I climbed the six or seven rungs and rose up through an opening at the top. It was the roof and as I suspected, it was aluminum. I stepped up onto it, hoping that it would hold up and a f
ew seconds later Paul stepped out next to me. Between us now we were putting about three hundred pounds of pressure on it. It didn’t seem to be sagging or anything, but I was still a little freaked out. He took my hand again and led me over to a part that had a little partition from the rest.

  We sat down and Paul looked up at the sky and said, “It’s pretty, huh?”

  He put his arm around me and I looked up at the obsidian sky dotted here and there with the twinkling of the stars. “It’s beautiful,” I said. When I was a little girl I used to think if I could get up high enough, I could touch one. Tonight they looked really far away. I looked to the right of us, out across the rooftops of the rest of the abandoned buildings and saw the distant flash of a shooting star, or maybe it was just the lights of a car reflected just right. I made a wish anyways, just to be sure.

  I felt Paul’s lips against the side of my head and I was surprised when he said, “One of these days, Jessie…I’m not going to have to live like this. I’m going to be a champion and I’ll have all kinds of money and I’ll be able to pay people to watch my family around the clock and keep them safe.”

  I leaned my head back into his shoulder and said, “I believe you will.”

  “Good,” he said, “Because when that future happens for me, I’d really like you to be a part of it.” I didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t have to. I’m sure like me, he could feel it. I would live with

  him in this abandoned building if I had to. I definitely wanted to be a part of his future, whatever that future might hold.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I woke up to the sound of rain. I forgot where I had fallen asleep until my hearing wasn’t the only sense assaulted by it. I suddenly realized that I could feel it as it dropped onto my face and rolled off me, dripping onto the heavy aluminum roof that Paul and I had fallen asleep on the night before. I opened my eyes, unable to really tell what time it was because the cloud cover caused everything around us to remain dark. The rain was only a light drizzle right now, but a large black cloud was looming nearby and I knew we’d be drenched if we didn’t get back inside.

  “Hey sleepyhead, wake up. We’re getting rained on.”

  Paul turned over onto his back and then groaned when he felt the harsh metal underneath him.

  Opening one eye he said, “It’s raining?” Before I answered him a big drop landed right on his cheek. He sat up and laughed. “Yeah, I guess it is. Come on, let’s go inside.”

  I followed him back down the ladder into the old gym. I could hear Victor’s voice as we dropped to the floor. “Uncle Paul! Did you guys sleep on the roof?”

  He looked towards the other room where his sister was and put his finger to his lips. Marie must be one of those mother’s with x-ray vision because she said, “It’s too late now, Paul. Now what are you going to tell him next time he wants to sleep up there?” Paul rolled his eyes and Victor snickered.

  “You got me in trouble again you little creep,” he said. He pushed Victor playfully and Victor pushed him back. I had to step out of the way to keep from getting in the middle of their pretend tussle.

  “Boys!” Marie called again from the other room.

  “We weren’t doing anything,” Victor hollered back.

  “Yeah, it was Jessie,” Paul said with a grin.

  I popped him on the back of the head which thoroughly amused Victor. Paul picked him back up and carried him upside down into the other room. Marie sighed and shook her head, but I could tell she wasn’t really mad at them. Paul was so good with him and Victor so obviously loved him that she couldn’t be.

  I was surprised to see eggs and bacon and hash browns on the table. I hadn’t noticed the cook-stove top the night before or the microwave. I wondered how you got electricity to an abandoned building. I was going to ask but then I remembered the gentle humming I’d heard the night before when we were on the roof. It must be run on a generator, probably gas-powered.

  Breakfast was surprisingly good and while I watched Paul and Victor play and tease back and forth, I let myself fleetingly fantasize about our future kids and what a great father he would be. I smiled to myself when I thought about how good-looking they would be too.

  “Are you staying today, Jessie?” Victor asked me while we were cleaning up. “Mom and I are going for a walk down by the old lake. It’s really cool down there. Nobody ever goes there so there are all kinds of neat old junk to find.”

  Marie smiled at him and said, “Yes, we have boxes of it in the next room.”

  “I’d like to, Victor but I have to work this afternoon. Maybe another time?”

  “Okay,” he said. He started to leave the room and Paul grabbed his sister around the neck with his arm playfully and said, “Quick Victor…get a box! I found some neat, old junk!”

  Marie casually elbowed him in the ribs. Paul doubled over and Victor laughed. It was cute how they all are with each other. Being with them really made me wish I had a sibling or two.

  “I’ll take you back to town today, if that’s okay. I wanted to hit the gym for a while.”

  “Sure, you think it’s safe?”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said. Looking at Marie he asked, “You don’t mind do you?”

  “Nope. Me and the boy are going junk-collecting. We’ll be fine.”

  After I said good-bye to Marie and Victor Paul and I started our walk back to the Chinese Restaurant. I was completely shocked when we got there and his pick-up was gone and a small white two-door Ford car was in its place. I could actually feel the panic in my chest before he noticed the look on my face and said, “It’s okay. My Sensei trades my car every few days. That way if Mitch does try following me, we’ve mixed it up a little.”

  “That’s really nice of him.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what we would have done without him,” he said, unlocking the car and opening the door for me. After I got in he went around to the other side.

  When he got in and started up the car I said, “Thank you for letting me come out. I had fun.”

  He smiled and said, “I meant what I said last night, it won’t always be like this.”

  “I know,” I told him again. “I like seeing you with Marie and Victor. I always wished I had a brother. You’re so good with your nephew too. One of these days you’re going to be a really good father.” Paul slammed on the brakes. If I hadn’t had my seatbelt on my head would have gone right through the windshield. “What the hell was that?” I said.

  He looked mad as he said, “Sorry, touchy brakes. I’m not used to this car.” We drove on for a while in silence. He seemed like he was brooding over something all of a sudden.

  “Paul…did I say something to piss you off or what?”

  “No.”

  We drove along again in silence for another ten minutes before I said, “Obviously I did. Why not just tell me…”

  He hit the brakes again, this time pulling off the side of the road. He put the car in park and said, “It’s not your fault, but I don’t like it when people tell me I’m going to be a good father.”

  “Why?” I couldn’t fathom how that could be anything but a compliment. He acted like he didn’t hear me at first. He put the car back in gear and pulled back out onto the road. After a bit I said, “Paul? Why?”

  “Because I was a father. A horrible one. The worst kind. My son died on my watch.” He said that all through gritted teeth. I felt like I had walked into a nightmare. What the hell? He had a son?

  “You were a father? When did this happen? Where is his mother?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Jessie.”

  “But…”

  “God damn it, Jessie! Are you fucking hard of hearing? I don’t want to fucking talk about it!”

  I wasn’t hard of hearing. I sat there quietly in shock wondering if I had a sign carved into my forehead that said, “Messed up guys wanted,” or “The more screwed up the better.” I was in a big enough mess trying to have a relationship with a guy who followed his siste
r around to keep her safe and lived in an abandoned gym. Now I find out he had a son…who died? What the hell is wrong with me? How is it possible that I attract nothing but men with demons and souls that need to be mended? I couldn’t fix the last one…chances are that I can’t fix this one either.

  When we got to my apartment, I got out of the car thinking he was just going to leave. I was wrong. He followed me in, neither one of us talking still. It was like déjà vu when I stepped in the door. I knew something was wrong.

  Paul was looking around at the walls as I called out, “Mom?” I was met with nothing but silence.

  “What happened to your walls?”

  “My mother painted them,” I said, simply. I was still mad at him for yelling at me. I think if he wants to talk about having any kind of future with me, finding out what happened to his kid and the kid’s mother were legitimate questions. I started going room to room, calling out for her. It was ridiculous; the whole place was only twelve-hundred square feet. If she was there, she would have answered me. The problem was my worst nightmare since I’d been a teenager was finding her dead from an overdose…or worse.

  “You can get back to Marie and Victor,” I told Paul. “I have to find my mother.”

  “No, they’re okay. I’ll go with you. Do you know where to look?”

  “I left her at the Baptist Church on Seventh Street last night before I came to see you. It doesn’t look like she’s been home all night.”

  “Okay, let’s start there.” I was grateful to him for volunteering and I was really too panicked to drive right then. I followed him back out to the car and we rode in silence again. I felt sick to my stomach. What if something happened to her while she tried to make her way home last night? I should have waited for her. Why was I so selfish?

  When we got to the church I jumped out and went straight to the place where the meeting had been the night before. The door was locked.

  “Jessie, the office is over here.” I followed Paul over to another door and he knocked on it. Mike, the guy who had led the group the night before answered the door. I thought I’d been shocked all I could be lately. But when Mike pulled open the door and saw Paul his face lit up and he said, “Hey Paul! How are you?”