Austin Noir, page 10
But look, I know my time is somewhat limited and I didn’t want to spend what was left thinking about some jackass kid who offed herself. So I put my head down and tapped my way toward the figure in black. I moved slow enough that she must have heard me coming.
The posture and the ridiculous hoodie told me she was young, but when I got closer I saw how young. I’d taught eleventh-grade English for ten years before getting sick. I knew what teenagers looked like. And not movie teenagers with straight teeth and thousand-dollar haircuts. Real teenagers look awful. Even the ones with “good” skin are still spotty, their hair tends to be kinda greasy, and no one learns how to dress themself until their midtwenties.
I positioned myself in her peripheral vision but didn’t look at her. We were both staring at the condos across the street. It was a new building—everything around here was a new building—and I imagine the studio apartments in there went for more than my mortgage.
Maybe she enjoyed hanging out up here and staring into the open windows. I could see people sitting on their couches or making food; one apartment directly across from us was flooded with what looked like studio lights.
I got nervous after seeing her phone and earbuds. They weren’t in her hand or in her ears. She’d set them next to her. The earbuds were on top of the phone, which sat in a comically oversized Hello Kitty case. On top of Kitty was a folded-up piece of paper. Sorry Tyler had been scrawled in capital letters.
I’d never taught a student who committed suicide. I’d taught those who threatened—everything from playful ideation in dark poetry to full-on “Mr. Alvarado, I’m going to do this tonight.” Every year there were one or two in my classes who had just been released from various facilities or centers. The wounds on their arms were still fresh, and their social workers would drop by once a month to bring them a hamburger and “chat about how things are going.” Most teachers hated having to deal with kids like that. Sometimes it’s hardest to help those who need it the most. I never minded them, and they usually didn’t mind me because I never treated them like Fabergé eggs.
“Hey,” I said. “You go to LBJ?”
She didn’t turn around but she rolled her eyes so hard I saw it in the back of her head.
“Where’d you go then? Or are you still in it?”
She rubbed the back of a hand against her chin. She wore a couple plain brass bands that had stained her first two fingers aquarium-green, but otherwise she looked healthy enough.
“I was homeschooled,” she said.
“Ah, there’s your problem then.”
She shot me a look and was ready to tear me a new one before she caught herself. “Oh, you’re funny, I guess.”
“Yeah, that’s me, I’m hilarious. Look, I don’t know who you are and I’m not going to ask. But if you jump from there you’ll regret it.”
“If I jump I won’t be able to regret anything.”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. That fall is only two or three seconds, but it’ll last a lifetime. You’ll claw for a ledge but you’ll just rip your fingernails off. And you’ll probably land in some bushes and end up paralyzed for the next seventy years. That’d suck.”
She shook her head and didn’t look at me. “I’m not falling for that reverse psychology or whatever clever thing you think you’re doing.”
“Ha, look at me, not much cleverness happening anymore. My name’s Pedro, what’s yours?”
“Sandra.” She said it slow, like it hurt.
“They’re still naming people Sandra?”
“At least two people did. Named me after an aunt I never met.”
“That’s nice.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me. Look, I’m probably not going to jump. I mean, I might, but if I do or don’t it won’t be because of you and whatever this is.”
“I’m just here to buy my son a graduation present. But Sandra, I’d feel a lot better about spending too much money in this awful place if I didn’t have to hear your body hit that ground.”
She swung a leg over the edge and straddled the wall. This made my heart stop, but my reflexes are so shot I didn’t move a muscle. She looked me up and down in that cool, easy way only teenagers can.
“Are you a teacher?” she asked.
I raised my eyebrows. “You do go to LBJ.”
“No, you just seem like that kind of asshole. Clever and all.”
“I was a teacher. Not anymore. Look, I can walk all day once I get going, but standing here like this is hell on my balance.”
Sandra peered over my shoulder into the parking garage. I wondered if she was looking for someone.
“Teachers are assholes,” she said.
“Most don’t start out that way.”
“Then what happens to them?”
“Shitheads like you.”
Sandra turned to hide her smile. “Did a shithead like me lead to that cane?”
“Cancer. Leukemia. I imagine stress doesn’t help, but teenagers don’t cause cancer as far as I know.”
“Leukemia isn’t one of those tumor cancers, right?”
“No, those are easy, just a few snips and you’re cured. Leukemia is when your blood and bone marrow kind of … glitch.”
“Glitch?”
“And then try to kill you.”
She hopped down off the wall. Her dingy Vans, once white but now a sickly gray, barely made a noise on the concrete. “You’re not a hero, you know. I wasn’t going to––”
“Who’s Tyler?”
She stuffed her phone, earbuds, and the note into the pocket of her hoodie. “Who?”
She walked forward and stopped right next to me. We were side by side, facing opposite directions, but she was close and it felt awkward. I gripped my cane. She gently swung her hip into mine. Not hard enough to knock me over. Just a tap. It was almost friendly.
“Don’t talk to strangers,” she said.
I watched her disappear into the parking garage. I glanced around for another witness to whatever just happened. Someone to explain to me if I had actually done anything, but no one was there.
* * *
I spent an hour in a department store I couldn’t afford picking out a pair of cuff links and a white dress shirt. Marco didn’t have anything this fancy, and I didn’t know where he would wear something like this, but it seemed like a real graduation gift.
I was halfway to the register before realizing I may have just picked out his outfit for my funeral. The white shirt went back on the rack and I bought a silky light-blue shirt instead. It didn’t take cuff links and it kind of looked like something a Miami gangster would wear, but I couldn’t only buy him cuff links.
When I got to the cash register, my card was declined. The salesclerk gave me one “Oh, that’s weird, try it again,” before turning serious and saying there wasn’t anything he could do.
“This isn’t right though,” I said. “I know there’s money in that account.”
He tucked in his bottom lip like he felt so sorry for me it hurt. “Our system’s been acting weird lately.”
“I don’t need that.” I leaned my cane against the counter and pulled out my phone.
“I’m sorry?”
“I don’t need understanding. There’s an error with my bank account. I’m sick but I’m not broke.”
“I see. Well, maybe if you have another card, or you can call someone for assistance?”
I had trouble logging into my bank’s app because it was asking for a PIN, but evidently not my actual card PIN but some other PIN.
“Look, I’m just trying to buy a shirt, give me a second.” I closed my eyes and tried to think of what I’d use as a second PIN. Who needs a second PIN?
“Sir?”
“Jesus Christ, will you give me a second?”
The clerk stepped back and that expression of pity turned into judgment. I knew what he was looking at. An old guy ready to snap into pieces. Another broke Mexican in a store that sold twenty-five-dollar socks. A sick man. Dying.
“What, you think you’ll never get sick? You’re maybe twenty-four and nothing will ever happen to you.”
He turned around and picked up a phone. The punk was calling security but didn’t mind turning his back on me. So I stepped forward, picked up my cane, and shoved him right between the shoulder blades.
The guy let out an “Ow” even though I barely touched him. He turned around and looked more shocked than mad.
“Hey,” I said, “go fuck yourself.”
My plan was to storm out of there, call my bank, fix whatever bullshit was happening, and then spend more money than I could afford just to rub it in their faces.
But I only made it about twenty feet before feeling dizzy. I gripped the handle of the cane and focused on breathing in and out through my nose like the physical therapist had recommended, but it was no use. There was a bench near the escalator and security was surrounding me before I could even plop my ass down.
* * *
When I got home, I didn’t tell Julia because I knew she’d be worried at first and then later pissed at me for causing a scene. I got sick two years ago, and she started wanting to leave me six months later. I see it in how she shuts doors behind her and how the only emotion I get from her is concern. She’ll help me put on my socks and she’ll pick up my phone when it slips out of my hand, but I’ll be damned if she’ll kiss me on the forehead.
She’s too Catholic to divorce an invalid. Her older sister took care of their parents until they died, and I know part of her thinks helping me up off the bathroom floor (something she’s only had to do twice, by the way) is her lot in life. Us Mexican Catholics aren’t living unless we’re suffering, but if you complain about your suffering or try to end it, somehow that makes it not count.
I don’t blame her for wanting to leave. The first few months after my diagnosis were, in some ways, the best part of our ten years together. We cried, we raged, we held each other like lovers in a tragedy.
But then I stopped reliving our best memories because it made me angry that those days were behind us. I stopped recording cheesy videos for Marco to see after I’m gone because they made me sad. I stopped joking about my bald head and my skinny arms because it depressed the shit out of me.
I stayed sick, and then the chemo made me sicker, and now I’m cured but broken and filled with bone marrow and blood that’s out to get me. I want to be better. I don’t like seeing Julia and Marco tense up when I enter the room. But I don’t know how to care about living again.
Julia saw that I came back from the Domain without any gifts for Marco, but she didn’t say anything and neither did I. Instead, I went into the bedroom and tried to figure out what happened to my money.
By the time I got someone at the bank to talk to me, my account had nearly been drained. Hundred-dollar charges had been hitting my account every five minutes like clockwork starting at eleven in the morning. The name of the merchant was Kitty_Says_Hi.
I remembered Sandra’s stupid phone case. So massive and childish. And then I remembered her stuffing that phone into her hoodie and then bumping into my hip, against my pocket, where my wallet was.
I could almost laugh. Almost.
* * *
Growing up, Austin was cool because people around the country had heard of us but no one actually ever came here. Then computer guys and Californians showed up, and now my old neighborhood is nothing but condos and oat milk. We moved to north Austin back when it was the outskirts, but even this area is filling up with fancy cars and people who moved to a “weird” city but call the cops if someone’s muffler is too loud.
I hated the Domain but now I was there two days in a row. Lucky me. This place is just a mall. Sure, it’s a new mall because it’s open-air and you can get a fifteen-dollar juice and a twenty-dollar cupcake, but it’s still a mall where assholes walk around pretending like they have money and teenagers on skateboards pretend they enjoy riding skateboards.
I didn’t really know what I was going to do when I saw Sandra again, but I’d find her somewhere. The Domain has about ten parking garages and I cruised up and down each of them, wondering if I’d catch her fishing for another sucker like me. But I had to stop after a while because going around and around started to make me nauseous.
Like I said, this place is a new, fancy mall, which is another way of saying they piled condos and hotels on top of stores and also snaked a bunch of two-lane roads between everything. There’s a constant war between drivers and pedestrians. The walkers make you wait at your stop sign for ten minutes while they trudge through the intersection, and then they make it back to their cars and get stuck at the same intersection. The angry guy who yells at a car for coming too close to his kids is the same one peeling out at a stop sign a few minutes later.
Honestly, the place reminds me of the hospital. Hospitals and giant malls aren’t like anywhere else in the world, yet they operate under the same twisted logic. They pull you into their vast systems and you can try to fight the schedules and the patterns, but you’ll lose so it’s easier to let yourself get washed away. We enter as humans, then we turn into another product to be scanned and processed.
Also, at both places it’s very easy to be surrounded by people and remain completely invisible. I was stuck at a stop sign and watched the river of pedestrians. Young couples drinking expensive coffee, high schoolers feeling oh so grown up, families either starting their day bright and cheery or ending it red-faced and sore.
There was a kid waiting on the corner, maybe seventeen years old, wearing a black T-shirt and a green hat. He was letting knots of pedestrians pass him. Every few seconds he’d put his phone into his pocket, and then he’d bring it back out and raise it to his face. It’s the most common gesture in the world, but each time he’d do it, he’d let his hand rest a little too close to a woman’s purse or he’d just graze the back of a man’s pants, so light that no one felt it, and besides, he was just another kid lost on his phone.
I don’t know how it works though I’d heard about devices or apps that let you skim the numbers off certain kinds of credit cards. They spoof a merchant and try to run a transaction without tripping any fraud alerts. It probably only works once out of every ten tries, but that’s enough if you’re patient.
I rolled down my window to yell at the kid in the green hat, but then the guy behind me started honking. The kid looked up and saw me staring at him. He spun around, nice and smooth, and went up the sidewalk. I tried to follow but lost him when he ducked into Banana Republic.
I’d need to do this on foot. Somehow.
I found a spot on the street and made it to a bench near an Astroturf-covered playscape. This was a good vantage point. I could see a few different strips of stores and I wasn’t even the frailest person sitting here watching the world go by.
Now I knew what I was looking for. Young people lingering by themselves and messing with their phones. God, imagine if I tried to explain this to a cop?
What are you doing here, sir?
Oh, just watching teenagers play with their phones because I think they’re part of some underground circle of high-tech thieves.
Julia would take me to get a CT scan if I said a word of this.
It was Friday, midday, but still the waves of people were relentless. Where were these people supposed to be? Should I have spent my life dragging Julia and Marco to places like this in the middle of the day?
About twenty minutes later, the kid in the green hat came walking down the sidewalk. He held his phone in front of him and then kept looking around, like he was lost. A few times he lifted his phone as if taking a selfie; a woman walking behind him had to stop quickly to keep from running into him. When he apologized, he brought his phone down and held it next to her purse. She smiled and kept moving without looking back.
The kid walked over to another teenager, a girl in a yellow sundress, who was sitting on a concrete ledge near a food truck. They huddled for a second and then the kid in the green hat walked away. I watched the girl for a few minutes. She was totally absorbed in her phone, but every few minutes some guy would approach her and lean close. She would smile and gesture like she was waiting for someone. Each guy would creep a little closer and then, swipe, she’d hold her phone against his pant pocket for just a second. Then she’d ignore him and he’d wander away, only to be replaced ten minutes later by another loser trying to pick up a teenager. These kids were good.
Then the girl in the sundress stood up and started walking in the direction the kid in the green hat had gone. After a few steps, she turned over her shoulder and looked right at me. I tried to tell myself it was random, just a quick glance behind her, but I met her eyes and I swear I saw a quick grin.
I should have just gone home, of course. The bank was reimbursing me and it’s not like these kids were shoving guns into people’s ribs. But honestly, I thought they were pretty clever, and I was curious.
The girl in the sundress rounded a corner ahead of me and I tried to keep up. My muscles are tight and my bones hurt all the time, yet I can walk long distances once I get moving. Quick turns are tough and standing in one place is hard, but if I keep my feet moving, I’m good.
She’d turned off the main strip of stores and was standing in front of a movie theater. The kid in the green hat was across the street at a restaurant’s side door. Both looked like any other teenager—only half interested in the tangible world.
I started to form a plan. Yeah, I knew it was a little late to come up with a plan, but it wasn’t like I did this regularly. Figured I’d keep it simple. I’d ask if Sandra was okay and then, well, I guess I’d just see what happened after that.
I was about twenty feet from the girl when I felt the lightest touch against my left side. I almost lost my balance, and when I righted myself I couldn’t see anyone. Or, rather, there were people everywhere and I didn’t know who had touched me. Then I felt another person brush my right side; maybe I saw a kid in a baggy white T-shirt. And then someone else was right behind me but all I saw was a red polo before they blended in with the crowd.
