Life imitates art. Art imitates life. Who gives a shit?
In the Gutter, the picture still colors the same shade of bleak. You're looking for hope, try the next corner.
In the Gutter, the picture still colors the same shade of bleak. You're looking for hope, try the next corner.
Stairs to Heaven by Nikki Palomino
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“You’ll let me know when I can come home, Mom?”
Nervous, I twirled
a strand of blonde hair. I needed her. “Found that Zeppelin record, ‘Stair-something
to Heaven.’ At my job. I work at Ginger’s Vinyl. Remember?” Mom grunted. I leaned into the
payphone. I’d started tricking at fourteen. I was sixteen now. I felt beyond tired. “You
know the record I broke when I was little?” She never forgave me. Lies, suicide
notes, razors, shitty childhood. I never forgave her. Lies, suicide notes,
boyfriends drunk.
Scary split to scarier streets.
Spotted Flora on the corner with foot traffic in combat
rhythm heading toward me. Click. Never great with goodbyes.
Flora had a plan to get us off the streets. She held up the
papers.
“Like melting butter in a skillet.” A falling star, she’d
been rough trade longer.
She pulled me from the crowd, gave the details. Her devoted
trick, she had straddled, knocked off his glasses, pushed the driver’s seat back
and crunch.
We no longer belonged to life, just a crappy series on an
analog TV. ’Peat, repeat. Other girls bugged Flora because she was favored, but
she could bust their balls for kicks. She liked me. I never cut in. I was a
blur behind her shoulder.
Flora tapped my canvas bag. “Ginger find you the record?”
“Never opened.” A high-five.
“Gotta be tonight with the bomber on the loose.”
“Too many cops, Flora.”
She became aware of her surroundings, trying desperately to
think on what I’d said, but any image of death and destruction was irrevocably
gone for now. Survival.
“W-h-a-t?”
“I’ve never shot anyone. I might be no good.”
“Backing out is not an option.”
Flora believed normality would arrive with the money.
Wet night, chilly. The street around the corner from an
escape alley, she’d parked at the curb. I came up the driver’s side, window lowered, with the gun. I had no choice but to carry my canvas bag with Mom’s record. We
were homeless. No safe place to stash. An unopened Zeppelin would score a solid
buzz for any junkie.
Flora was good, leaning back on the steering wheel, her dark
hair flowing across the dash. She straddled him, the trick lost to passion
against the worn seat. Gave me enough room to hit his chest. My eyes
half-closed, I aimed, fired multiple rounds. Hadn’t expected the trick to pull her
to him when he came.
I eased toward the sedan, expected a word from Flora, but
she was slumped onto his chest. That’s when I noticed the blood seeping through
her long, stringy hair. Shocked, my eyes skipped to his bugged, lifeless, like
a flat poem, an instrument without music. I touched Flora, jumped when she slid
down onto the stick shift. Crying, I tried to piece together the scraps.
“I’ll send the package first thing in the morning.”
I took off again even as Ginger yelled, “You can still have the job if you want?”
I took off again even as Ginger yelled, “You can still have the job if you want?”
But I was gone, three streets over and slamming straight
into vice.
“Why you in such a hurry?”
He knew Flora and me. She should have listened. Every cop in
the city rocked the streets. Each wanted a collar that could set him up for a
higher rank. The bomber had hit hard. Ten industrial buildings, strip mall, a
closed public pool. Only a matter of time before someone other than a security
guard was killed by the blast.
“Let me see your arms, Summer.” My name always sounded so
harsh when a cop trashed it.
“I’m clean.”
“And I’m Kojack.”
Before the sleeve of my leather jacket reached my elbow, a
distant cop yelled something official-sounding, and vice took off running back
toward the sedan. I was left alone under a circle of white raining down from a
streetlight.
I bolted a few blocks over. I hit dead-center into a hairy
guy in a dark jumpsuit. His body jerked involuntarily, and his work boot
knocked into a silver, half-opened case set against the brick apartment
building. I blinked a millisecond to rid the tear smarting, and my vision
narrowed to one thing, his hand dropping the cigarette butt and grabbing me by
the throat. There were no mysteries, no walls hiding us from the world. His
throat pulsated against my head. He wasn’t sucking air between his teeth. He
lost track as the next second clipped by. I heard a cutting scream from an
opened window two flights up, and then the weakened boom done right that could
have secured his reputation.
Only I had changed both our lives just by being there.
Thrown to the sidewalk, I marveled at the thunder rumbling
and the apartment dwellers above the quivering light raying ethereal through
the smoke. I was not surprised at the momentary gilded stairway jutting skyward.
But I did startle when a bronze lord under the far fixed stars scooped me up. I
had never known anything except lies, suicide notes, razors and my shitty
childhood.
My mom believed in no more.
Had I not been so stunned in photographic memory of a time
when Mom and I held each other tight, I would have recognized the face above me
not as God but as vice. His shaven head blazed, his eyes with punchy
determination were the same ones that had stared Flora and me down when
tricking. In the midst of a botched bombing and successful capture, “Kojack” smiled
sympathetically, knowing that to have winners, there must be losers.
