Charisma Page 8

  One was a red-haired crew-cut type, with a neck wider than his jaw line. Shoulders like the deck of an aircraft carrier were bursting out of his cutoff tank top. His legs were short in proportion to his torso, but of simian breadth. All of this was in contrast with his face, which was surprisingly mild. The small black eyes above his Roman nose were bright and intelligent.

  Crew-cut leaned over the man on the weight bench, who was currently doing a pretty fair impression of a hydraulic jack. The bar was bending under its load, and the man on the bench vibrated with the effort to get it up one more time. Veins leapt out on his chest, popped out at his temples. His eyes nearly started from their sockets.

  “Burning up there, baby?” Crew-cut said sweetly. “Come on, just two more—”

  The other man, a suntanned long-jawed Gargantua tattooed from toe to eyebrow, managed one more, then hissed, “Jesus, Brando, I can’t—”

  Brando leaned close. “Make it worth your while, Cotter. Remember last Saturday? Give it to me. One more, sugar. Give it to me—”

  Cotter screamed, set his sweaty hands and hoisted that heavy iron again. His arms locked straight, biceps and triceps ballooning grotesquely. His chest heaved as if an earthquake were erupting beneath his ribcage. He screamed either victory or agony—it was hard to tell which. That eruption of strength peaked and waned, and the bar trembled. In the instant before he would certainly have collapsed and crushed his chest into salsa, Brando snatched it from him with little apparent effort, and guided it back onto the safety bar with a clang. Cotter’s gleaming, tattooed chest heaved like a beached blowfish. Cotter levered himself back to a sitting position, mouth gaping as he sucked wind. With obvious relish, Brando leaned over and gave him a sloppy kiss.

  Patrick couldn’t stop himself from gasping, “Gross!”

  Only then did the men seem to see the kids standing at the door. They finished their last reps, and set the iron clanging back on the safety bars, mopping their faces with towels.

  Brando seemed bemused. “Private club, kids. Get on out.”

  “Excuse me.” For once, the unflappable Frankie seemed thoroughly flapped.

  Cotter had finally stopped billowing. “This isn’t for you, sonny boy. Come back in ten years.” The other monsters erupted into good-natured laughter. Frankie took a step back, his jug ears red, his calm stamped flat.

  Patrick took the flyers flopping from Frankie’s hands and fumbled with them, evening up the edges. Startled at his own bravado, he held a couple of them out to the muscle men. “Seen you guys passing out pamphlets over at Twin Rivers,” he said.

  “Doing the Lord’s work,” Brando said without a trace of irony.

  “Just thought you’d like one of ours.” He held it out further, his arm shaking. Brando stepped forward, surprisingly graceful for a man of his intimidating mass, a gentle and utterly unthreatening expression on his face.

  Brando looked at the flyer. And smiled. “Your mom?”

  Patrick nodded.

  “She has the little shop over across from the steak house?” Another nod. “Well, thanks, little brother. You guys take care. There are some real assholes out these days.”

  Frankie finally managed to get his throat open. “You hear about the stomping?”

  “Yeah,” Brando said. “Shit like that gets around. Someone likes to play with people who can’t play back. Well.” He rubbed his hands over his swollen arms. “Coolin’ off. Gotta get back to work.” He reached out and ruffled Patrick’s hair, while Frankie looked on goggle-eyed. Then the big man turned his weight-thickened back to them, and headed back to the bench. “One more set!” he barked.

  Cotter groaned. Brando turned the music back up, slid under the weight bar, set his palms firmly against the underside and hoisted it up.

  Patrick watched for an awestruck second, and then backed out of the room.

  * * *

  “Goddamn,” Frankie whooped. “He touched you man, he touched you!”

  “What happened?” Destiny asked.

  “Nothin’,” Patrick replied. “Not like being a homo is catching or something.”

  Frankie leered. “You act like you like it. I think you do like it. I think that you should just go back in there right now and sign up. ‘Oh, please, Mr. Homo, can I lick the sweat off your butt for you?”

  “Jesus,” Destiny said. “There is a lady here. Please?”

  “Where? Where?” Frankie asked, looking both ways with faux concern. “Did I hit her? Is she all right?” They rolled their bikes out into the bike lane along Ocean Way.

  “Oh, go spit,” Patrick said.

  * * *

  Frankie made it up to them, actually paying their way into the matinee showing of the latest Jerry Bruckheimer action opus. Despite its R rating, the girl at the box office looked the other way, as did the teenaged assistant manager. They bought popcorn and bonbons, and sat in the front row, riffing on the cornier lines of dialogue, cheering at the special effects and exaggerated violence.

  Afterwards, they prowled the Twin City Mall. They bought yogurt at the food court while Destiny and Frankie talked about the fun they were going to have at summer camp in July. Patrick tried to suppress his raging jealousy, but managed only to conceal it.

  “Too bad about Tanesha,” Frankie said seriously.

  “What about her?” Patrick asked, sliding his spoon up the little twisty mountain of frozen dessert. “Have you heard from her?” He stopped, smiling at the thought.

  Frankie stared at him. “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Jeez. I’m sorry. Her cousin Jeffrey told me that she got herself killed nearly two months ago, Pat. Oh, man.” For a moment, all of Frankie’s cavalier attitude dissolved.

  Destiny set her yogurt down, blinking. “Is this one of your lousy jokes? If it is…”

  Frankie shook his head vigorously. “Honest to God. She got hit by a car, man. Didn’t even make it to the hospital.”

  “Oh…” Patrick tried to think of something to say, and couldn’t. “Oh, man, I was just thinking about her this morning. Oh, man.” He turned his face away from them, afraid for a moment that he might cry. The moment passed, and he turned back. “Why didn’t someone tell us?”

  “God, man,” Frankie said. “I guess everyone thought someone else had told you.”

  “When did it happen, Frankie?” Destiny asked.

  “On a Saturday, maybe seven weeks ago. I’m sorry, guys. You know, we haven’t talked all that much lately. I just heard about it couple days ago.”

  Destiny was somewhere else. “Seven weeks ago? Wow. That’s really weird,” she said.

  “Why?” Patrick had his voice back under control now.

  “Just a dream. Maybe seven weeks ago. Dreamed that we were all back at Claremont, napping. Only Tanesha was flying. I remember that. She was above us, flying.”

  Tears sparkled in Destiny’s eyes, and began to spill down her cheeks. Patrick put his arm across her shoulder, and she leaned into him, her face pressed against his chest, making little hitching sounds.

  Frankie seemed completely at a loss, finishing his cup of yogurt with no apparent joy. By the time his spoon struck bottom, Destiny was done, but her eyes were still luminous.

  “We have to do something. At least a card for her mom.”

  The boys nodded. Then Destiny sighed, and turned her attention back to her half-melted dessert cup. Patrick hugged her again, and then went back to his, but after a moment he looked up at Frankie, who seemed miserable. “Are you guys all right?” he asked.

  Patrick nodded, but was silent until he finished his cup.

  Then the three of them rose, bussed their trays, and left the mall without another word.

  * * *

  The sun was low in the sky by the time they unlocked their bikes and set out to distribute the rest of the flyers. They were down to the last few of them by the time they were back on Ocean Way and reached the Inside Edge coffee shop.

  Patrick and De
stiny looked at each other as if wondering what they were going to do. Then they jumped off their bikes and rolled them up to the front of the shop. They didn’t bother to lock them. This time Destiny came inside, sandwiched between Patrick and an uncharacteristically sober Frankie.

  * * *

  Inside Edge was a deliberate anachronism, a paean to the tie-dyed, black-lit, psychedelic sixties complete with posters of Janis and Jimi and The Who. Love the One You’re With bleated from waist-high tower speakers that resembled aged orange crates, but produced superbly clear digital sound.

  Inside Edge was a favorite hangout for a certain element of Claremont: the radio station and bookstore crowd, the lunchtime chess and poetry bunch, the handmade pottery and flea market 15-minute portrait artists. In short, the town potheads.

  Everybody knew that this was where the town dopers made their connections. The cops never exactly busted it, but Inside Edge had been tossed a couple of times. Nothing greenish-brown and illegal ever turned up: the proprietors were too smart for that. Legend had it that out in the hills north of town there was one hell of a fine little marijuana patch. It was said that carefully concealed fields produced a yearly crop of Cowlitz Coma, probably Washington’s premier Two-Hit Shit. Further (so the legend had it) steady Inside Edge customers could make the connections necessary to buy discreet little baggies of bud.

  Patrick already knew kids at school who smoked pot, and not one of them claimed to have acquired their supply from the Edge. If Rowan and her husband did in fact sell weed, they didn’t sell to kids.

  Rowan Rose was a flaming redhead in her late fifties, rather skinny upstairs, heavy down bottom, with a smile bright enough to light a billboard. Today, that smile looked a bit worried, as if she had been up half the night with a sick friend. Or perhaps a wounded child. “Hey, Frankie, Pat,” she said, as brightly as she could. “How are ya? If you’re looking for work—”

  Patrick felt warmed and welcomed by her smile, faded though it might be. “Fine, Rowan. Just wanted to come by, say ‘Hi.’” Her expression said she wasn’t wholly convinced.

  “Is that all?”

  Destiny closed the door behind them. “Well … maybe we wanted to know about Manny.”

  Rowan’s face darkened, and a shadow of suspicion crossed her face. A hugely fat, longhaired man in a checkerboard smock emerged from the swinging doors behind her. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “They were just asking about Manny,” she said.

  He tightened his eyes at them, and then relaxed. “Aw, hell, he’s all right. We’ll deal with this shit.”

  Frankie grinned at him. “How’s the farm, Pork?”

  Rowan’s husband Ralph had been fat so long he didn’t remember skinny, and was good-natured enough not to care. He had gotten the nickname “Pork” in Vietnam—originally a reference to his love of the Other White Meat, but in time a not-terribly veiled reference to his waistline. He narrowed his little eyes. “Ain’t got no farm,” he said.

  Frankie wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. “Why don’t you roll me a fat one?” he said, innocently.

  Rowan rolled her eyes as if she had no idea what he was talking about. “I tell you what,” she said. “How about I set three hot chocolates at that table right over there?”

  The spring afternoon was just beginning to cool, and that sounded like a stellar idea, one good enough to motivate even Frankie to shut up and let something nice happen for a change.

  “Do we have a deal?” she asked.

  “Deal,” Patrick and Destiny said.

  She leaned in until she was nose to nose with Frankie. “Then you can that kind of talk.”

  “Oops,” he said, and sat.

  Destiny sat kitty-corner to him, and couldn’t help glaring at him with a particularly evil eye. “Frankie…” she began, and then trailed off.

  Frankie shrugged. “Well, everybody knows they’ve got the stuff, they grow the stuff, and they deal the stuff—”

  He cut off his dissertation as Rowan brought the hot chocolate to the table.

  Rowan’s face was both young and old, and she looked as if she had been an active and delicious part of the sixties scene in San Francisco, as if she had spent most of the last thirty years piling her worldly possessions into her VW van and truckin’ on down the road after the Grateful Dead. When Jerry Garcia died, Rowan had worn black for a month. How exactly she had ended up in a town the likes of Claremont was a source of much quizzical speculation.

  “Thanks, Rowan,” Destiny said. She sipped carefully, swirling the cocoa against her tongue, and pronounced it Good.

  Rowan hovered, not quite done with them. “Now,” she said. “On the other subject. If it was true—and it’s not, by the way—I certainly wouldn’t give any to little weasels like you.”

  “And if we were big weasels?” Frankie asked.

  “Come back and ask that question in ten years, and we’ll talk again.”

  “Will the answer be different?” Patrick said.

  “No, but we’ll have fun talking.” She winked at him. Rowan Rose was old enough to be his mother … hell, his grandmother, but there was something about her that gave Patrick that odd light-headed feeling. And made something deep down inside him feel … angry? No, that wasn’t it. Confused. Jigsawed inside, sort of loose and electric. It felt a little like waiting to hit the opposing line in a good, rough game of football, all sizzling adrenaline. But why did he feel that about Rowan? Some part of him wanted to hurt something. But who? And why?

  That he didn’t know, and not knowing frightened him far more than had any of the make-believe violence in the afternoon’s movie.

  She leaned in close, as if she saw something in him that was of infinite interest. “And how about you, Pat?” she asked. “How are you?”

  He felt dizzy, a little disoriented as he smelled her perfume.

  Odd.

  “Fine,” he said. He felt a sudden, powerful urge to change the subject. “But I heard about Manny. What happened?”

  Now her face fell. “He had an accident,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “I bet Trask will help spread that accident around.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said. “Trask could have one, too.”

  They looked at each other, and Destiny laughed. “Trask? Nothing can hurt Trask!” There were four trophies set on shelves behind the counter and over the speakers. Each portrayed little golden men performing a variety of punches and kicks. Those were Trask’s trophies. Manny’s big brother’s trophies. Whatever had happened to Manny, surely Trask would sort it out.

  Rowan’s faint smile remained, but the light had faded from it. “It’s not that simple, kids. It’s not something I’m prepared to talk about. I know you mean well, but … it’s not that simple.”

  Patrick’s mind was buzzing. What was this all about, really? Trask looked like a hippie, but he was also the aerobic kickboxing instructor at the local kung-fu academy. He was tall and lanky and lean, and looked like he’d just stepped out of a Baywatch episode. He’d even won tournaments down in Portland. Trask taught the Kickin’ Kids class where Herman Sevujian took his lumps, and was really pretty much a big teddy bear.

  Patrick’s gaze wandered to a silver-framed black-and-white behind the counter, a picture of Trask standing next to Chuck Norris himself. With all of that martial arts training, what in the world did Rowan have to be worried about?

  “And he wouldn’t be alone, either,” Frankie offered. “He has friends over at the academy, if anything happened…”

  Rowan’s eyes were sad, as if she didn’t want to be the one to introduce these children to the ways of the real world. “Trask is a very good fighter,” she said proudly. “Manny’s … accident was just that. An accident.” Her face hardened, as if her words proclaimed that the ultimate, irreversible end of discussion.

  Strange. Patrick had been at the Inside Edge only a few weeks ago, but something was different now. He saw her fatigue more deeply, could smell
the fear radiating from her, a mixture of sour milk and talcum powder. He had always thought the Edge to be absolutely the hippest hangout, but if he looked closer he saw the electrical tape mending the chairs, the dog-eared books on the racks, the paint flaked away from the wooden chessmen on the game tables. Why hadn’t he noticed before?

  Perceive those things that cannot be seen.

  Pay attention even to little things.

  Those were Musashi’s words, words he had learned so long ago they seemed as natural a part of him as his fingernails. They bubbled up in his mind as they often did when there was trouble. Suddenly it felt as if the entire situation were a game, one of those multi-level Star Trek chessboards, with the different people and facts balancing each other, separate but connected and interacting. And what was it that his instincts were trying to tell him?

  Before he could finish formulating a thought, Destiny broke the silence. “Rowan,” she said, “if it wasn’t just an accident. And if—”

  “It was an accident,” she said. Rowan pushed herself away from the table. “The world is bigger than you think it is.” She turned her face away from them, but not before Patrick saw a glimmer of moisture welling in her eyes. Rowan blinked rapidly. “You’re smart, all of you. But you don’t know.” Her eyes were bright and tight, as if she were only a twitch away from panic.

  “All right,” Destiny said, reasonably. Then as Destiny had a tendency to do, she surprised Patrick and took an entirely different tactic. “I wrote a story once, though, about some nice people who were being hurt. I mean, their youngest son was hurt, and the mother was afraid to let her older son settle it. In my story, they went to the police, and the police were able to handle things. Do you think that was a good story?”

  Jeez, that’s transparent, Patrick thought.

  To his surprise, Rowan pulled up a chair and sat down with them. “I think your story sounds good,” she said carefully. “Too simple, maybe.”

  Love the One You’re With had ended, and now Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit began its opening drumbeat.

  “How?” Destiny asked.

  Rowan paused, looking at them. Patrick’s eyes were calm, his peripheral vision floating out, expanding enough to see that Frankie and Destiny were sharing the same peaceful oasis. There was no urging from either of them. Any of them. Just that restfulness.