Dark reUnion

There’s a tree in front of it now. There are trees all over, running up and down the street. Leaves in summer and life standing by in the winter, waiting for the next spring to come and to keep coming. I think I even saw a couple of shrubs behind a bus bench a block over.

I saw pictures of it before I saw it face to face.  Google Earth is a handy thing.  I got pictures all up and down Union, and all over Pueblo long before my feet touched sidewalk.  Well, before they touched sidewalk again.  It had been twenty years and it’s been fixed up, not just the street but the building itself.   The ironwork was stripped and repainted and all the brickwork repointed.  It’s a boutique now. Women’s things.  Accessories, and some cute little books about … I don’t know, fucking rainbows or something.  Sorry, it’s nice, and I even told them that when I went in, but … it’s not their fault they don’t know none of that belongs there.

I know it wasn’t, but there are times when I think that place – that whole street - might actually have been in black and white when I went there as a child.  I remember it in black and white, at least, like some old, old movie that was way too old for me to be in.  Like one of those quarter movies my sister and I would go up to the Uptown and see. Movie, popcorn and a soda for a quarter, like in olden times.  At night, it became a different theater.  They’d have the kids’ matinees in the afternoon, and then at night, they’d have X rated movies.  Two separate realities.  Mostly.

Back then, it wasn’t a fancy women’s boutique.  It was a beer joint called Al’s Tap Room.  They had pool tables, and other tables where old guys would play pinochle or dominos, and sometimes the odd chess game.  There was no wine or hard liquor, just beer, and a cooler case where you could buy a Coke or Nehi for your kid if you brought one in.  Old style neighborhood tap room where it isn’t unusual to see a guy bring his kid along, that’s the demographic. Was the demographic.  These days, the vintage soft drink case, where you paid your dime and then navigated your bottle out of the little maze, would’ve gone for fifteen thousand dollars and would be stocked with wine or premixed artisanal cocktails or some such.  They also made burgers and dogs, and you could have chips to go with, but again, that was back then. No burgers and dogs in the boutique.

There was a little pastry shop directly across the street. I could’ve crossed there. Traffic was light. I took my time, though to go down to the crosswalk, then back up the street to it. Given my luck, some overzealous cop would’ve arrested me for jaywalking, and that would’ve messed everything up.  I took a little café table on the sidewalk and sat with coffee and a Danish.  Back then, this place was a little appliance repair shop.  All changed. I’d change too, if I’d seen what you saw, I said under my breath. To a building.  I watched the front of the boutique.  What I expected it to do, I don’t know.  Something subliminal, maybe, a little flash like in horror movies where you see the killer’s face for a single frame.

I drank my coffee. It was heavy and sludgy, and left a bitter residue.  I tried the Danish.  It didn’t belong.  Too sweet. Not like the calories were going to matter, but hey.  I slid it off the plate and into the garbage and walked off down the block.  I went south, toward the river and the bluffs.  I was glad of the light jacket I’d brought. The temps were in the sixties, but I was cold.  I’d been cold since I parked, and the coffee had done little to warm me.

When I got to the bridge, I considered continuing up the sidewalk to the library.  It was just another couple of blocks, really.  I thought about the day I’d “promoted” myself from the Children’s Collection downstairs to the main library above.  I felt like I’d be nabbed at any moment by library cops, and forced back downstairs, away from all the power and danger of the grown up books.  I’d slip through the stacks like I was looking for somebody, then I’d grab books and park in a back corner.  I just decided one day that I was going to have all that grown-up power for myself.  I think I was actually a little disappointed that nobody chased me away.  I was nine and I had my bold, defiant speech all set, and never got to use it. 

A nostalgic trip to the library would’ve just been a diversion, though, so I walked as far I needed to in order to see the water in the river - what water there was - and then turned back. When I was a kid going over the river to the library, that was a dizzying height, though it was probably no more than thirty feet.  Still, it was a wide open space, and I was a skinny little kid. I was always afraid the slightest breeze might blow me off the bridge. No more.

It was only then I noticed music coming in from somewhere – had to have been over somewhere on the Riverwalk.  I only caught bits of it, but it sounded Irish, even though St. Pat’s day had already come and gone.  I had wondered if Al’s had been bulldozed to make way for part of the Riverwalk.  I couldn’t remember exactly where it had been, but it – obviously – was still there, closer to the train station than to city hall.  

I was stalling, still stalling. I’d been stalling since I’d parked, really.  I’d been stalling since arriving in town the day before.  Actually, I’d been stalling for years.  But I was close now. Closer than I’d been in a long time.

I would have stayed up on the bridge who knows how long if I didn’t have to put up with the wind gusting around the bluffs, or the little individual gusts that accompanied each car coming down the hill.

I zipped my jacket and turned back. No more stalling.

It was time to go. I told myself, “Sure it’s a very nice place, and I’m sure the people who work there are very nice.  It’s a shame, but it can’t be helped. Lotta things can’t be helped.  They happen to you and you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

My cell buzzed. I dragged it out of my coat pocket just in time to see the missed call. Angela again.  Twice today.  I sat at a bench at the end of the bridge and just texted her, “Sorry, in a workshop at the moment. Conference going great. Call you later. Xoxo”

Liar.

I figured she’d understand, though, when she got the email.

All the preliminaries out of the way, I returned to the building. It was a really nice boutique.  There were several purses I thought Angela would really like.  I wandered around for a while, making chit-chat.  Weather, home towns, how hard it is to shop for a wife, only in town for the day … random stuff.  I thought, “Hey, I can ring these things up first, arrange to have them shipped, and she’d get them” but I knew that was stupid. And she’d hate them and never wear them.  Maybe from another place.  Not here, not now.

I took a purse and a belt and some stockings up to the counter for appearances sake, then as I fished around in my pockets for my wallet, I just asked, casually, if I could use their restroom for a minute.

She pointed me back past the other side of a curtain.  “Just straight back” she said. “Past the stairs, and just at the end on the right. It’s just one for everyone.” she said.  That was different. The “one for everyone” was the same, but the location wasn’t. It used to be at the back and down the stairs. You’d go through the store room then, and it would be right next to the furnace.

At least they wouldn’t get their one restroom messed up.

The stairs had been refurbished.  They were nice and solid and quiet.  The store room, old store room, was roomier.  Less clutter, just a/c filters and such.  Where the restroom used to be was a utility room. Reuse the water connection, sure.  

I closed the door. There was no latch or lock, but that was fine. Why make it hard for them? I’d be done soon enough.  I laid a little board across a mop bucket, one of those rolling kinds, then took off my coat.  Probably wouldn’t make much of a mess.  

It dawned on me at that point that I hadn’t really taken a breath since I stepped into the room.  My pulse was pounding and I’d been pretty much holding my breath.  The last thing I needed was to pass out and ruin everything.

Out there in the store room was where Felix had touched me the first time.  Just a brush, really, like it was an accident.  I didn’t want to make myself sound stupid by saying anything.  A month or so later, two or three visits later, he starts talking to me, always down there when I’m coming out of the restroom.  “Hey, I can tell the way you play chess, you’re a pretty smart kid – that’s a pretty mature playing style.” Things like that.  Yeah, I wanted to be smart and grown up, especially if it meant I was smarter than those old drunks up there.  He seemed okay, too.  Good personality, always interested, always asking questions and complimenting people, y’know?  And he always had girls stopping by to see him, to bring him lunch and things like that.  The old guys were always giving him a hard time about how many girlfriends he had, but they were also buying him beers for being a stud. Jealous, right?

His dad owned the place, and sometimes Felix would make me a cheeseburger just for the heck of it. Maybe a slopper, which made me feel great, ‘cause that’s how the coolest grownups in town ate their cheeseburgers.

All this was replaying in my head while I settled myself.  I had a whole clonopin with my coffee and I was still struggling to get my breathing and pulse under control.  

It was only after we were “buddies” that he started suggesting some games we could play while everyone else was playing “their stupid pool games.”  Everybody does it, he said, but they’re embarrassed, and they hate to talk about it, but it was cool just between the two of us.  We just wouldn’t say.

A lot of times, we’d just sit down there and talk, always as I was leaving the restroom. Baseball, fishing, girls, whatever.  I was only eight, but the stories he told about girls made me excited.  Maybe it was just being trusted with “inside stories.” Not all, though.  He’d even show me pictures of girls he had sex with, some of them Polaroid pictures with their tops off.  Not all. Most were snapshots safe enough to develop at the drug store.

After we’d talk, I’d go upstairs, and sometimes my dad would notice I’d been gone a while and I’d make up some story and he’d say “Ah, ok. Don’t wander off, though, pal” and he’d go back to his beer and pool.

Only one time, though, did Felix talk me into taking down my pants. It was a dare and I fell for it.  With my pants around my ankles and my tighty whities on display, he walked over and said, “Tell me if this feels good. This is what a girl can do for you” and he cupped my penis through my shorts.  I panicked a little, then I realized it was starting to grow and get hard, so then I panicked a lot.  I fell backwards over a case of paper towels and scrambled to pull my pants back up.  

I said “I gotta go up!” and started walking fast toward the stairs, and he got in my path.

“Hey, I’m sorry, David, I didn’t mean anything by it.  Y’know?  I was just showing you.  Let’s forget it happened, right?  No harm, no foul.  Really, man, you were acting like you wanted to, and I was just going along.”

I slipped past him, and just before I reached the door at the top of the stairs, he hollered up. “I’m not one of those guys. I like girls! Ask anybody.”

I still don't know why I bothered, but I stopped and yelled back, “I know!” then went out.

Once I was in the back room, I just froze.  I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t say anything.  It was just such a big mess, and maybe it was me, maybe I tricked him some way into thinking I wanted him to do that, and there was no way anyone was going to believe that Felix had touched a boy between the legs.

I went back out and just sat down where I’d been.  He came up maybe a minute later, eyeballing me the whole time.  It didn’t take him too long to figure out that I hadn’t said anything.  

Dad and I went home a little while later.

The next time we came in, about a week later, Felix was out on vacation, his dad said.  Fishing up around Estes Park, he thought.  Said to say “hi” to me.

Now, I understand that he was getting some space, a running start, in case I decided to tell on him after my dad and I got home.  If the next time he called home, his dad said “David’s father wants to kill you” he'd know not to come back. If his dad said, “David says hi back” he'd know he was in the clear.

He was there the next time we went in, and he was still watching me, but seemed relaxed.  After that last time downstairs, though, I always made sure I’d gone to the restroom before we left the house.

Eventually, months passed and Felix and I were kind of buddies again and he was bringing me extra Cokes and a slopper every now and then, and everything was forgotten.  

His girlfriends still came and went.  I had always watched them because they were fun and attractive. I watched them even closer afterward, though, wondering what they knew and whether he ever did anything unusual with anyone but me.

Nothing, not as far as I could tell, anyway.

A whole year went by and the incident became just a strange little thing that happened.  One of those “who knows what really happened” things inside your own head.  One of those “I must’ve misunderstood” things that we all probably have.

I started using the restroom there again.  It had been over a year, and everything was fine.  Nothing happened. No more long chats in the basement.

Until the one time.

I was coming out of the restroom, and he was in the store room by the stairs.  

“Hey, buddy.” His face was saying something it had only said once before. I realized right then that the other time hadn’t been a misunderstanding, though everything since had been.

I’m not gonna … there’s no need to go into detail, and it was all a blur anyway, and it’s all too late. Way too late.  He took a fistful of my collar, said “You and me, we’re gonna play a game” and made me go back into the restroom.  The whole thing only took about ten minutes, and I never ever said anything to anyone. Not to a friend or a priest or my parents, or a girlfriend or therapists or anybody.  In a way, not even to myself, even though sometimes I would have nightmares.  Even then, it was something that was happening to another little boy and I was trying to stop Felix.

The reason I came down to the old restroom – the former rest room - though, the reason I sat myself down on the mop bucket and board, and the reason I decided to shoot myself, was that I’d found out almost a year ago and ages too late, that Felix had been arrested for a series of rapes and disappearances.  The news said they were police were starting with six rapes and three disappearances.  Two boys and seven girls, so far, and they were asking other people to come forward.  For weeks, I was excited that justice would happen in the long run, and then came more news. There were three more cold cases that were tied back to him. Within a few days after that, he managed to hang himself in his cell.  Snuck away is what he did.

I was all broken up for a long time about what had happened down in the restroom, but I worked through it, mostly, by the time I was out of college.  Then all of this new stuff came up, and after reading the stories, it occurred to me that I might’ve been the first.  I looked at the dates and they were all after me.  All the known dates, sure, but … every single one of them happened later.

I spent months thinking maybe I coulda stopped him before he got started. Maybe I coulda told someone.  Maybe I coulda known how to. Eventually, a plan came to me, one that would stop the maybes. That’s how this trip was born.

The clonopin was kicking in and working great.  Once I’d gotten to that point, I didn’t have any more anxiety. I was just calm and sad.  I was ready to write an ending for one of his stories – the one with me.

I reached into my coat pockets and took out my cell phone and my 22.  

One thing at a time. Calm. That’s how it was.  I unlocked the phone and pulled up email, then drafts, and then I skimmed the email I’d written for Angela, explaining it all.  I scrolled back up and hit send.  I’d wanted her to know, but not to know too soon.

I was going to put the phone down right next to me, but thought maybe the gun would fall and it would break it, or maybe blood would get all over it, so I slipped it back into my coat.

I put the gun barrel in my mouth. Carefully. You want to point it upward, the internet said.  Don’t make yourself a vegetable by blowing off the wrong part of your brain. It has to go right up into your head.  They say the 22 is great for that because it’s less likely to exit, which means it can just bounce around and do lots of damage.  Perfect for me. Nice and thorough, and maybe less messy than others.  

I took a really deep breath, really deep, and then two more quick breaths and held it all for a moment, and I could feel it taking effect as I exhaled, even as I was blowing the odor of gun oil all over the little room. Vagus nerve stimulation is what it’s called. You can look it up. Great for calming, fighting depression, stimulating digestion – all kinds of things.

I did it one more time. Deep, hold it, then breathe it out slowly.

I pulled the trigger.

The hammer just snapped down. No bang, no blast, no blood.  That’s the problem, you see, with rimfire cartridges. You get a lot more misfires than with regular center-fire cartridges.  I had six shots, though. What were the chances they’d all misfire?

I took my deep breath again and let it all out, slowly.  Everything was still on track.

I pulled the trigger.

Again, snap. No bang, no blast, no blood.

I thought about getting angry, or at least desperate.  I thought about firing off the other four shells in rapid succession, but I just didn’t have the energy for an outburst.

Plus, my phone was buzzing, which was an enormous distraction at that point. I couldn’t process both, so I put the gun back in my coat pocket and took out the phone.

Angela.

I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, but it was long enough for her to get the email, read it twice, and go into orbit.  It was long enough for five missed calls, however long that was.

The buzzing stopped.  I waited for it to start again. I’d just answer.  She needed to know.

Then it dawned on me that she was probably now calling 911 for a city that I wasn’t even in, and trying to get someone to go looking for someone about to kill themselves someplace where nobody was.

I dialed and it rolled to voice mail.

I dialed again and it rolled to voice mail.

I dialed again, and she grabbed it on the first ring. Her throat was tight and her sinuses were filled with mucus.

“Hi ... hi, Angela ... ”

“No … No … I'm ...”

“No, I stopped myself. I won't. No, I promise I won’t.”

“It’s just … well, I don’t know if I can say it better over the phone than in the email, y'know?  Yes, when I get home ... absolutely.”

“I know … no, it wasn’t fair.”

“I’m sorry this happened.”

“I’m … yes … my flight is still scheduled for this evening.  I might could move it up. Yes, I will if I can.”

“Sure, you can meet me there. That would be good. I'll find you at baggage claim.”

I said “Yes” a lot, and “No” a lot, and “I’m sorry” a lot, and I agreed to a lot of things before we got off the phone.  They weren’t all easy things, but in the long run, they were all good things.

I managed to escape the basement and slip out the back door of the building without anyone noticing.

The rest of the day went smoothly – and according to the new plan.