Billy
Billy woke suddenly, hearing someone shout outside. It had come from the sidewalk in front of the apartment house.
Just one word.
“Hey!”
He squeezed his eyes closed again, mourning the sudden loss of his expectation for the new day: simply that it would be suitably quiet, and without conflict.
Then, being a realist at heart, he jumped up and slunk to his front lookout place, the big sliding-glass patio door, and peered around the curtain.
The girl was still there. No, not still. Again. Again, he meant.
Felipe Alvarez, one of his upstairs neighbors, was squatted down next to her, apparently engaging her in conversation. And Jake Lafferty, his other upstairs neighbor, was trotting up the walk to intervene, as if he found the scene quite unsatisfactory.
Then again, from what little he had been able to hear and observe over the years, Billy gathered that his gruff neighbor Lafferty found precious few situations to his liking. In fact, Lafferty even took it a step further by wearing that dissatisfaction on his sleeve, a misguided badge of…well, something. Billy tried to decide what, but found he couldn’t imagine.
Now Lafferty trotted to the base of the stairs and called out, “Hey! Jose! What are you doing with that little girl?”
Felipe rose to his feet. Not combative, so much — well, not quite, Billy gathered — but ruffled, and on guard. It made Billy’s poor tired heart hammer again, because it smacked of conflict, his least-favorite life element.
If only that little girl would go inside! Her presence there on the stairs, day in and day out, was like a wild card thrown into Billy’s day, dealing him terrifyingly unpredictable hands.
But, terror or no, he wanted to hear what came next. So, ever so quietly, he slid open the patio door about six inches, the better to watch and listen.
“First off,” Felipe said in his fluent but heavily accented English, “my name is not Jose.”
“Well, I didn’t mean that it was,” Lafferty said. “It’s just an expression. A nickname. You know.”
“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “I don’t know at all. Here’s what I know. I know I’ve told you my name prob’ly ten times. And I know you told me your name once, and I don’t never forget it. It’s Jake. Right? So how ’bout I just call you Joe instead? I mean, most white American guys are named Joe, right? So that’ll be close enough, don’t you think?”
Billy glanced down at the little girl, to see if she looked afraid. But she gazed back up at the two men with an open, almost eager face. As if what happened next could only be entertaining and fun.
She was plump, that little girl. What was it these days with kids and extra weight? In Billy’s day, kids ran around. There was barely such a thing as a fat kid. If there was, it was a rarity.
Then again, he’d spent nearly his entire childhood in dance class, which is hardly the land in which you’d find a plump kid — if there was such a phenomenon. Oh, he’d gone to school, of course. What choice would he have had? But he’d blocked those memories as best he could.
“I know his name!” Grace said. Well, shrieked.
But Felipe held up one hand to her and said, “No, wait. Let’s just wait and see if he knows it.”
“Listen you—” Lafferty said, signaling that he’d had quite enough.
Billy’s heart hammered faster, wondering if one of the men would strike the other. But Lafferty never even managed to finish his sentence. Because, no matter how firmly you corked the mouth on that little girl, it didn’t stay corked any longer than just that moment.
“It’s Felipe!” she shouted, obviously proud of herself.
“Fine,” Lafferty said. “Felipe. How about you answer my question now, Felipe?”
“Oh, yeah, and that’s the other thing,” Felipe said. “I was just asking Grace how come she’s not in school, and that’s all I was doing, and I don’t appreciate your suggesting otherwise.”
“You really are always looking for a fight, aren’t you?”
“Me? Me? I’m not the one looking for a fight, compa?ero. Every time I see you, you got that same chip on your shoulder. I don’t fight with nobody. You ask anybody who knows me. You just carry that same fight with you every place you go, and then dress it up to look like the other guy’s fight. You musta had that chip on your shoulder so long you don’t even see it no more. I bet you don’t even know what the world would look like without that great big chip blocking your view.”
Lafferty swelled his chest and opened his mouth to speak, but the noisy girl beat him to it.
“Do you guys have to fight?” she asked, at full volume.
Billy smiled, inwardly admiring her. From where on earth did that brand of courage emerge? Then again, she was a kid. A kid could get away with just about anything.
Lafferty looked down at the girl disapprovingly.
“Why aren’t you in school?”
“Her name is Grace,” Felipe said.
“I know that,” Lafferty said, but it came off as unconvincing, and Billy was not sure, from the sound of it, whether Lafferty had known that at all. “Why aren’t you in school, Grace?”
“Cause I’m not allowed to walk all that way by myself. My mom has to take me. And she’s asleep.”
“At nine o’clock in the morning?”
“Is it nine o’clock?”
“It is. Five after.”
“Then, yeah. At nine o’clock.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“You’re the one with the watch,” Grace said.
Lafferty sighed miserably. “Do you have a key?”
Yes, Billy thought. She does. It’s very new. It sparkles. It has shine. That wonderful, indefinable quality. Shine.
“Yep.” She held the key up so Lafferty could see it. It still dangled on the long cord around her neck.
“Go inside and see if you can wake her up.”
“I already tried.”
“Try again. Will ya?”
The girl blew out her breath, loud and dramatic. Then she rose to her feet and tromped inside.
The minute she did, Felipe made his way down the stairs. Lafferty moved closer, stood nearly chest to chest with the younger man, and they stared each other down.
Billy leaned on the edge of the sliding door, feeling mildly faint.
“I’m not your compa?ero,” Lafferty said.
“You don’t even know what it means.”
“No, I don’t, and that’s just the trouble.”
“It’s not an insult.”
“Well, how am I to know? When I was your age, I was taught to respect my elders. My father taught me that.”
“You know what my father taught me? That if I wanted respect I better plan on earning it. All I did was get down and ask that little girl how come she wasn’t in school, and then here you come out of nowhere, treating me like I’m some kind of child-molester or something.”
“You shouldn’t even ask her that much. It’s a crazy world. Everybody’s suspicious about everything. Guy your age shouldn’t even get that near a little girl to ask anything at all. It could be taken the wrong way.”
“A guy my age? You sure my age is the problem here? What about you? You asked her.”
“That’s different. I’m older.”
“Oh. Right. I forgot. Guys in their fifties are never child-molesters.”
“You got a mouth on you, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“You’re sure as hell not. If you were my son you’d treat me with respect.”
Just then Grace appeared again, and the two men jumped back, as if the little girl were their parent or their teacher, and they’d been caught fighting. It seemed ludicrous to Billy from the outside, from the observer’s stance, but in another way he could imagine how such a thing could happen in the confusion of the moment.
“She won’t wake up,” Grace said.
Lafferty looked at Felipe, who looked back.
“That doesn’t seem right,” Lafferty said to Felipe. Then, to the girl, “Did you see any bottles lying around?”
“No. What kind of bottles?”
“Like the kind of bottles you drink from.”
“She wasn’t drinking.”
“Is she OK? Should somebody call a doctor?”
“She’s not sick. You just can’t wake her up when she’s sleeping.”
She sat back down on the stairs, as if planning on staying a while.
Lafferty looked back at Felipe again. Then he took the young man by the sleeve and pulled him across the weedy grass and out of the earshot of the little girl.
And that, unfortunately, put them squarely out of the range of Billy’s ears as well.
But they weren’t fighting now. That much Billy could tell from their body language. They had their heads together, conferring about something, deciding something. Occasionally Lafferty would glance over his shoulder toward Grace.
“Have a wonderful solution,” Billy said, out loud, but quietly enough so as not to give himself away to Grace, who was still quite close by on the stairs. “Because this is certainly a problem.”
But a moment later Felipe peeled away and strode down the sloping lawn, out on to the sidewalk, and down the street.
Lafferty came up the stairs, and Billy waited hopefully, still thinking his neighbor might have a perfect idea up his sleeve. But he walked right by Grace, as if some alien force field had suddenly rendered her invisible.
Just as his foot touched the top step, he looked up and saw Billy watching — caught his eye — which was as close as possible to the only part of Billy peeking around the curtain. He stopped in his tracks.
“What’re you looking at?” he bellowed.
Billy leaped backwards into his own apartment, folded over himself and sank to the rug, his heart fluttering in panic. He remained in this highly protective posture until he’d heard his neighbor come through the front apartment house door, close it behind him, and move along the hall and up the stairs.
Then he jumped up and slammed the glass patio door closed, quickly and gingerly, as if the door itself had been the source of all this upset.
He did not look out again at any time that morning.
He knew the girl must still be out there, but he could not bring himself to check.
? ? ?
It was almost dusk when he began to debate the issue with himself. Out loud.
“We don’t want to know that badly,” he said.
Then, upon some reflection, “We do want to know. Of course. Of course we do. Just not that badly.”
“Besides,” he added a moment later, “it’s not dark enough.”
He glanced out his sliding-glass door again.
“Then again, when the streetlights come on, it will be too late. Won’t it? And then we’ll have to wonder all night. And wondering tends to keep us awake.”
He sighed deeply, and tied on his old robe. But not really because he wanted to ask the question so badly as to brave the outdoors for his answer. More because there was simply no other way to end the utter exhaustion of wrestling with himself on the issue.
The little girl looked up when he slid the patio door open.
Billy did not initially step out.
It was a little earlier, a little lighter, than it had been the last time he’d gone outside. A shocking thought, he suddenly realized. Had he, really? He’d really gone outside? Maybe that had only been a dream.
He shook such thinking away again, forcing his mind to focus. Back to the issue at hand: that it was not as dark this time. And darkness served, if need be, as a rudimentary form of cover.
He wanted to step backwards, into his safe home, and slide the door closed again. But the little girl was watching him, waiting for him to come out. How insane would she think he was, if he backed up now? How much of the truth was he willing to let her see?
He took one step out into the cool late afternoon, then immediately dropped to his knees. He moved on his hands and knees for a step or two, then hit his belly and slithered to the edge of the patio. It had not been a move thought out in advance. Yes, he knew it was much weirder than just going back inside. But it happened that way. And it was too late to either fix it or mourn it by then.
He looked over the edge of the patio at Grace.
“Why are you crawling on your belly?” she asked, in her famous voice.
“Shhhhh,” he said, instinctively.
“Sorry,” she said, with only the tiniest bit less volume. “I always have trouble with that.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell it.”
“Maybe some other time. I came out here to ask you a question.”
“OK.”
“Why are you sitting outside?”
“You asked me that the last time.”
“I know I did. But you didn’t answer me.”
And, at least for the first few moments, she didn’t answer this time, either.
“I mean, I know your mom is somehow doing something other than looking after you. That much is clear. But you have a key. You could still sit inside.”
“Right.”
“So, why?”
“Maybe you should tell me the story about crawling on your belly first.”
“I don’t think so. I think we do my question tonight.”
“Why yours?”
“Because I asked first.”
“No, you didn’t. I asked first.”
“I asked the other night. You said so yourself.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Grace said, solemnly, as if accepting that the rules were quite clear on that. “You did. Well, it’s like this. If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And so then nobody will help me.”
Billy’s heart fell. Literally, from the feel of it. He felt physically aware of the sensation of it falling, hitting the organs in his poor lower belly. None of which could have happened, of course. But all of which carried a felt sense of itself all the same.
“Oh, you’re in trouble, huh?”
“You didn’t know?”
“I guess I knew.”
“See, it has to be somebody who lives here. Because that way I can still stay with my mom.”
A silence. Billy could see and feel where this train was headed, which is why he offered no reply.
“Can you help me?”
Another long silence fell, during which Billy was aware of the pebbly nature of the patio surface against the front of his chest and legs.
“Baby girl, I can’t even help myself.”
“Yeah. That’s what I figured.”
It was a low and very dark moment, even by Billy standards. Not only had it just been firmly established that he was utterly useless, but clearly this little girl had been fully able to see for herself how useless he was, even in advance of being told.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m useless. I wasn’t always. But now I am.”
“OK,” she replied.
“Well, goodnight,” he said.
“It’s not very late,” she said.
“But I won’t see you again before bed. So that’s why the goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” she said. Rather flatly.
Billy slithered back inside for the night.