15. I Don’t Have the Greatest Luck

I don’t have the greatest luck. Sometimes I think I kind of bring this on myself because I’m not always in, whatever you call it, the here and now. Like the first time I got busted. I was sixteen and had broken my back the February before and got way into painkillers. Man, I loved that numb feeling, as if there was a lead casing around my heart that kept out all the upsetting crap that normally pierced me like X-rays. Anyway, there was a woman I had started seeing, Ophelia, a grad student in classics at the U, and I was over at her first-floor apartment in Center City, and I was standing in front of the open living room window with a blunt. And a cop walks by. I was too bent to notice. Until I heard his nightstick on the sill.

‘Come outside,’ he said. The officer was just doing what he had to, Pops explained when he took me home from the station. If the cop was a hard-ass, he’d have kicked in Ophelia’s front door and tossed the place. But that’s the point. Ophelia got lucky, and I didn’t. I mean, who gets arrested by a cop who’s just walking down the block to get a sub?

Within six months, I had been picked up two more times. On the last occasion, after Pops again had arranged my release at about four a.m., he turned to speak to me even before we left the police station parking lot.

‘Pinky,’ my grandfather told me, ‘I have noticed something throughout my years in this business.’ He meant being a criminal defense lawyer. ‘There are people who never seem to get caught. And people who always do. That second group, Pinky, become my steady clients. And you are one of them. I cannot explain this. It has nothing to do with intelligence. Call it luck, if you like. Or karma. Or fate. But you have to respect whatever force is operating.’

How Pops put this, telling me to accept the fact that the universe would cut me no breaks—I felt that. Which means that I should have listened to Rik when he warned me about leaving TWO alone.

The day after DeGrassi’s testimony, since Rik is hoping Hess will call and shut the whole proceeding down, the boss gives me the day off. I sleep in, but around one, I decide to take a walk. I’m thinking I might pick up some lunch, it’s a great day, but I know already what I’m going to do, even though I promise myself that I just want to be sure TWO’s not up to any new tricks with the Ritz and that the NoDirt remains behind the condensers. It will, I tell myself, be the last time.

I wander downtown and wait up the block from True Fitness. Same as always, he comes out with his red gym bag and heads toward Green Fruit. He disappears around the corner. Making sure I don’t get near enough to attract his attention, I eventually drift up to the café to take a quick peek through the window. I can’t make him out at any of the tables, and on my second pass, I linger a second longer but still don’t see him.

Until I turn around. I can’t imagine how he got so close. He must have been hidden in the shade of the doorway to the shop next door. But he is no more than a foot from me. I’m not short, five eight and a half, but at well over six feet, he looms above me, especially since he’s broader shouldered than he appears from a distance with that lithe frame.

“Looking for someone?” he asks. It’s the utter coldness of his expression that is frightening. He waits a second for an answer, which I can’t muster, then leans a few inches closer and whispers, “Why are you following me? It’s been a month at least.”

I don’t know what to say. He’s scarier than I ever expected, even on a busy street in broad daylight. But I’m tongue-tied mostly because I’ve plunged into this cave of disappointment in myself. Story of my life: I never ever know when to stop.

“You know,” I say.

“No, I do not know,” he says.

I can’t ask him who he’s spying for. Rik already told me how dangerous that would be. So with only a second to think, I go where my brain takes me, remembering my lame-assed bumbling in the hallway a few weeks ago when I asked him about coffee, and the way he misunderstood me.

“Sometimes I’m feeling someone, you know.”

“‘Feeling?’”

“You know.” I’m doing my best to act really embarrassed, which is not an act at all. “You know, somebody’s kind of hot. You think, you know, we could click. I’m kind of into you, okay?” The only way I could be more obvious is to flash him, but he still seems slow to register what I’m saying.

“I am not looking for a girlfriend,” he finally answers.

It’s a confusing moment. I should be relieved that he seems to buy my act, and that maybe he’s not going to turn me over to some Chinese special ops team that will kidnap me and fold me into a crate, where they will keep me until I tell them everything I know. But I can always surprise myself. And in the first instant I feel annoyed and maybe even disappointed by how fast he said no. After all this, the dude is just like, ‘Swipe left’? If it wouldn’t undercut my pose, I’d just tell him to fuck himself.

“Well, I don’t need a boyfriend either, man. I’m just saying, you know, hang out. See what happens. Whatever. You know, it was a prank, man, following you? You’re hard as all fuck to get to know. What do you do, man? You just walk around. I don’t get it.”

The blades have withdrawn from his eyes. Instead, he seems to be processing just how weird and unexpected I am. Suddenly he’s the one caught off guard, which leaves me an opportunity to escape.

“Okay,” I say. “Sorry not sorry. I get it. One-way street. I’ll leave you alone.”

I slide off with a quick wave, not looking back.

  

About eight that night, I’m on Facebook. For the most part, I think it’s an incredible snooze. A billion people I don’t care about doing stuff that makes next to no difference to me. The common wisdom, whether it’s what people say or what blasts out of the Internet, never really seems to be describing my life or me. Reading all those posts just makes me feel weirder in the end.

Which doesn’t keep me from wasting about one night a week. One laugh is all these people from high school, who would have done the Carlton Dance across the entire cafeteria to avoid having to say hi, now want to friend me, which is basically an offer to sign up for their fan club. I take it, but mostly to see how ridiculous they all are. Wow, here’s news: During the height of the pandemic you just about went crazy. Aren’t you special? And this one is definitely worth worldwide attention: While classes were virtual you led your daughter’s second grade class in sewing the pieces of a quilt that were stitched together when in-person classes resumed.

I would say the main thing I’ve learned from Facebook is something I knew already: No kids. Not me. No grimy handprints on my sleeve. What in God’s name would I do with a kid as fucked up as me?

Anyway, that’s how I’m occupied when there is a knock on my front door. Leaving aside Arturo, the janitor, the only people who do that are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who slip past the buzzer into the building when one of my neighbors is leaving. Peeking through the fish-eye, I expect a couple guys in suits, smiling already and holding a handful of pamphlets. But it’s TWO.

I immediately feel panic, and it grows while I try to figure what’s up. Best guess is that he’s thought through our encounter on the street and, with time to add things up, doesn’t buy my bullshit. Now Mr. Superspy wants to find out how much I know. And what if I know too much—as I do? Maybe it’s what Rik warned me about, and TWO is here to choke me.

But when I open the door, his affect is a lot different than it was on the street. He’s in a pair of jeans and his hands are in his pockets, and he’s slumped just a little, as tall people often do to seem less imposing.

“Okay if I come in?” He has kind of a thinking smile, like he’s amusing himself with this request.

I want to say no. But how can I be into the dude one minute and then slam the door the next?

I look at him across the threshold.

“You know, man, that was really embarrassing when I thought about it. I’m sure I totally freaked you out. Sometimes I get inside my head and can’t get out. But you don’t need to worry. Just forget the whole thing, dude. I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”

His tongue rolls around inside his mouth. He doesn’t say anything at first but points at my sofa.

“Mind?” he asks and edges past me.

The TV is on, some stupid romance show I wasn’t really watching while I was on the computer. Gomer gives TWO the usual warm welcome and bares his teeth before scampering away. If your housekeeping standard is a FEMA site, which is my baseline, then he’s caught me on a good night. There is an open can of tuna I ate for dinner on the counter, which I’m sure is stinking up the place, and some dirty clothes on the sofa arm—including, back to that whole luck thing, a bra and thong, not far from where he chooses to sit down.

“You want something to drink?” I ask. “Beer? I’ve got some whiskey, I think.”

“Juice?”

Juice. I should have figured him for super healthy given what I know about his habits. I have some OJ. It’s past its pull date but it’s still okay when I taste a little on my finger. As I’m pouring, I keep calculating what is going on. If he was here to murder me, would he be drinking orange juice?

Handing him the glass, I say, still standing, “So do you have a name?”

He gives me a look. “You know my name, right?”

He couldn’t have seen me at the gym. They were still outside when I shuffled through the IDs.

“Clarence?” I ask. “I’m Clarice, by the way.” I offer my hand, which he takes briefly with a surprisingly weak shake.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“It’s on the mailbox downstairs.”

“And yours isn’t.”

“Better that way.”

“You on the run, man?”

“Only if you count a crazy ex. Definitely do not want to see her again.”

“Is that why you’re here, to ghost your ex?”

“Pretty much. There were some stunts. Sugar in the gas tank. Pounding the doorbell at three a.m. It was either have her arrested or leave.” He smiles. “Or murder her.”

I take a beat on that. The way he said it was almost like he’s mocking me.

“And where is she?”

“Pittsburgh.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“That’s where I came from.”

“And why Highland Isle?”

“I have a client.”

“And how’d you end up in this building? It’s not exactly a tourist destination.” I want to see if he’ll even hint about the sight lines to Direct. But he throws up a hand as if he has no idea.

“The client chose it. Furnished it, pays the rent. Free is free,” he says. As if he’d live in his trunk downstairs if that was what the client told him to do. But even saying this little, he’s basically admitted that this location suits what the client has him doing.

“And what’s your business?”

He frowns. I knew Twenty Questions was going to end soon.

“What do you do?” he asks. I like his accent. He sounds pretty much like a Midwesterner except the o’s stay too long in his mouth, like he’s swallowing an egg. American, I’d guess, but maybe born elsewhere.

“Me?” I answer. “I’m a private investigator.”

“Oh yes? What do you investigate?”

“I work for a lawyer in town. Mostly I look at records. Or talk to people. I mean, I was a paralegal for years, so I do some of that.”

“‘Paralegal,’” he says. “I hear that, but I have no idea what it means.”

“It means you do the shit the lawyer doesn’t want to do. Keep track of documents. But in this job, mostly I’m out on the street. Interviewing people. Witnesses. You know, ‘Did you see the accident? How fast was everybody going?’ It’s actually a good job for me. Cause normally with people—I mean, I don’t have a clue. I can’t even look anybody in the eye.” I glance back at him, having said all this vacantly staring at a spot on the wall behind him.

“And are you investigating me?”

I laugh. “Only cause I can’t figure out your story.”

He shrugs. “Why does that matter?”

“Well, hell, man. You live next door. There’s never a sound from the place, but you’re creeping around outside at three a.m. You’re weird.”

“You follow around everybody you find weird?”

“I do a lot of crazy shit, frankly. But I already told you. I’ll leave you alone.” I raise a hand. “Word of honor.”

“Actually,” he says. He takes a sip from his orange juice.

“Actually what?”

“What did you say? ‘Hang out.’”

“You came over to hang out?”

He makes a face again. He’s clearly not a talker. In fact, some sort of shyness has overcome him, seeming to shrink him down, or at least drive him back into his own core. I can see the effort when he surfaces at last.

“To see if you were serious,” he says softly.

About fucking. It feels like a door hit me in the face: That’s what he means. He came over to get it on. I act surprised, which I am. But men are, you know, pretty basic. And I kind of have it going on, at least enough that most of them don’t turn me down.

Now what? I think. Now what?

From the time I began to understand what sex was, like as a tween, I’ve gone through moments when I could imagine it with everyone who came into sight. I mean, everyone: the thick-calved gal jumping off the FedEx truck, the hostile Asian guy behind the bulletproof glass at the convenience store and even the old lady hobbling down the street beside her equally old Shih Tsu. Which has led me to follow my imagination to a lot of stupid places, like finding how it would be to get railed by my Uber driver or to sneak off at a party with somebody’s girlfriend. But I’ve never had sex when I didn’t want to. I never hooked up with somebody on a dare. There was a lot of that in high school. ‘I dare you to do the guy no one sits with in the cafeteria.’ No thanks. Sex, whatever else, is about my fantasy, not yours. And no one is ever going to tell me what I’ve got to do with my body. Period.

So even if I’ve done this to myself, I’m not sleeping with this guy to keep up with my own lies. I will say what everybody has the right to say: I changed my fucking mind.

But okay, TWO is hot to several powers, no denying that. And strange, which makes him intriguing. And yeah, I’ve spouted off that random shit to Tonya, which means something is boiling around in the back of my brain.

“Okay, cool,” I say and sit down with him on the love seat. I give him a long look, but I can tell he has no clue what happens next. He probably never got into the random college hookup phase or went home often with someone he picked up in a bar, and so he doesn’t realize that his line is, ‘Okay, where’s your bedroom?’

“Koob,” he says then.

I get it slowly.

“Your name is Koob?” I know at once, don’t ask how, that this is so. And that totally changes our reality, the fact that he’s willing to make this tiny investment in the truth and come out from hiding. We are really here now, both of us. “I never met anybody named Koob.”

“It’s Hmong. It’s actually pronounced”—he says something like ‘Con,’ while pushing the entire word through his nose—“but in America I’ve always let people just say it how it looks to them. ‘Rhymes with boob,’ I said as a kid.” He adds a slightly embarrassed smile.

I stare at him. “I thought Hmong were like midgets. I mean not really, but super short.”

“My dad is Chinese. From Liaoning, where they’re real tall. I take after him.”

He looks at me again. And then slowly lifts one hand and touches the blunted point of the nail in my nose.

“Do you ever take that out?”

“It’s a look,” I say. Then I slide closer to him, so I’m right up against his arm and leg. They’re like walls. “You afraid I’m gonna hurt you? I won’t.” I lean close and, of all things, lick him. His nose and then a couple other spots. And put my hand in his lap.

It goes nicely after that.

Pops, who was a close observer of me during the three years or so I lived in his house, would express occasional exasperation about my personal life. ‘Pinky, really,’ he used to say, ‘can you not think of another way to get to know someone, aside from sleeping with them?’ After about the second or third time he asked that, I said, ‘Pops, cut me a break. Doesn’t the Bible say when one of those horny old guys gets it on with like his daughters that ‘he knew her’? You tell me another way to learn so much about somebody else as quickly.’ It starts of course with what they look like naked, which is, if you’re me, something always circulating somewhere in my mind. Even better, you learn about that secret person inside them—what they like, where their best spots are, and what they yearn for, which for each person is always a little snowflaky and different. And like I say, once I’m in bed, I stop being baffled by other people. This part I know. And the other person is not just putting up with me or being polite or looking baffled as fuck, but is really happy to be with me, which, more than any particular act, makes me happy too.

With Koob, it’s a really good physical fit. His skin is as smooth as it looks, and naturally, he’s ripped. I like his pace, and I like his junk. It’s got kind of like a mushroom on top that hits the right spot.

Afterwards, he rolls down beside me. We are eye to eye and he’s smiling. He runs a hand along my side, from my shoulder down past my waist.

“Tell me about your ink,” he says.

“It was kind of a work in progress for years,” I say. “You know, I kept adding to it. But now there’s not a lot of open acreage left.”

“Except here.” He touches my breasts.

“Too painful,” I say. “I’m really sensitive.” I point. “The nipple clamps were torture.”

“Any of the tats you have second thoughts about?”

“You mean like having an old boyfriend’s name? I mean, I know a woman, she had the word ‘Indefensible’ tattooed across her belly. She got pregnant and you couldn’t even figure out if they were letters. That wasn’t too strategic. She looked good afterwards, but the word was still kind of droopy. But no. All this popping color is kind of out of fashion because supposedly some of it ends up in your liver. Most tattoos now are two-tone. But I still think my tats are awesome. I mean, like when I was younger I’d stare at my skin tone in a mirror and think, I didn’t choose this. So why not make it look how I want? Which is what I did. No regrets.”

He takes that in.

“And do you ever feel naked?” he asks. “Or is it always like you’re wearing something?”

That is a pretty cool question, because I’ve never even thought of that.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe that’s why there’s no ink on the parts of me that most people aren’t going to see. So I still feel naked when I’m naked.” I hitch a shoulder, like I don’t really have a clue. “People do all this shit and never understand themselves. I mean, I always have. When I was younger, it was worse of course. Sometimes I’d do stuff, I’d say stuff, and it was like I was on the outside watching myself, like I’d look at my hands, my arms, and I was there thinking, Whoa, guys, where you going?”

He smiles, on the verge of laughter.

“What about you?” I ask. “You do stuff where you don’t have a clue why?”

He shakes his head solemnly.

“Not very often,” but then he breaks into that smile. “Maybe now,” he says.

“And how’s that goin for ya?”

“So far, so good,” he says.

“Cool,” I say. “And by the way. You asked about my ink. What’s this?”

I touch the only tattoo on him, which is on his left breast, over his heart, two arrows crossed over a sword, all of them in gold.

“Service,” he says.

“What branch?”

“Army.”

He’s being coy. But so am I. It’s Special Forces. I’ve seen it before although I could never remember on who. I noticed it, even in the middle of things, and thought to myself, So he is American.

“Where’d you serve?”

“Iraq.”

“How was that?”

“Hard. Started at Haditha. Lot of searching for HVT.”

“High-value targets?”

“Exactly.”

“Saddam?”

“I was assigned to the task force. We chased down a convoy as they were trying to escape to Syria. We knew it was a bunch of Ba’athists and ended up in a hellacious firefight with the Syrians. We were sure we had Saddam, but it turned out to be a bunch of his cousins.”

“Did you kill anyone?”

He frowns and turns away a bit. “Why does everyone ask that question?”

“Cause we want to know, man. I mean, war, it’s like the essential human condition, kill or be killed, and most of us never get there. It seems pretty epic to me. I would have enlisted after high school, but like I told you, I broke my back snowboarding and they said I wouldn’t pass the physical. But I was ready for the shooting. At least I thought I was.”

“Thought you were. That’s how to put it. People shot at me, I shot back. It’s just survival.”

There’s a round scar on his leg.

“That part of it?”

“It was. Usual stupid thing. When you least expect it.”

“Was that the end of your tour?”

“They moved me into comms. I would have re-upped if I was still eligible for combat, but it took a long time to get back the use of my leg.”

“Is that why you work out so much?”

His head rolls back a bit. “How do you know I work out so much?”

“Dude, you leave here with a gym bag every day.”

He shakes his head. “What else have you seen, watching me?”

“I’m seeing what I wanted to see,” I say, and touch him gently down there. But he’s not ready yet and sits up, looking around.

“Do you want a cigarette?” I ask.

He looks at me suspiciously.

“I see you out on the porch.”

I get a very faint smile and an equally calibrated headshake.

“Not sure how it fits in with your workout routine,” I add.

“Me neither,” he says. “I wonder every time.”

“There you go,” I say. “Making no sense to yourself. Just open the far window,” I say.

I am playing him a little, since I’ve figured his smoking is purely a cover. Instead, I end up pretty startled when he pulls a pack of Luckies out of a trouser pocket and lights up beside my far window, which doesn’t hold an air conditioner. It’s one of the first nights where the warmth of the day has lingered, and in the wash of light from the one lamp that is on, I’m disappointed to see several mosquitoes out already, sensing opportunity and smacking themselves into the screen.

I stand up. It’s the first time I’ve been on my feet without my clothes, and Koob turns to look me over without apology. There’s a little too much of me here and there, especially waist to knees, but I seem to have his full attention.

“I’m going to get some whiskey,” I say. “You want some?”

“Neh. I don’t drink.”

“Any story with that?”

“You mean did I have a problem?”

“I guess.”

“For a while. When I got back.”

“Twelve steps?”

“One step: I stopped drinking.”

I laugh.

“Go get your whiskey,” he says. “It won’t bother me.” I tell him we could get high instead, but he just shakes his head.

When I return with half an inch in a glass, I sit down on the bed. He’s at the window, having a second smoke, and studies me again.

“So tell me what it’s like. Being a private investigator. Do you like that better than paralegal?”

“It’s an awesome gig, frankly. Like right now, Rik, my boss, he’s representing the chief of police. These former officers—well, two are former officers—they’re claiming she made these guys have sex with her to get promoted.”

That wide smile appears briefly.

“Yeah, kind of saucy,” I say. “It’s been burning down the Internet. But she didn’t do it. Not really.”

“‘Not really’? How do you do that not really?”

“It’s a story. Everybody’s got a story, right? She’s good people, the Chief. It was just sex, you know? Like, are you trying to get anything else being here? It’s big fun. That’s all. Right?”

He takes a moment, considering things. The way he moaned, he better not make out like it was just okay. But instead he says, “Really big fun.” He crushes the cigarette on the window ledge, then raises the screen and gives the butt a good toss so that it will end up in the small yard three floors below. Then he comes back to bed.

“Did you have to take a test to become a private investigator?” he asks then.

I explain the whole rigmarole, the training I did and the state exam.

“And do you carry a gun?” he asks.

“Sometimes. Do you?”

“I haven’t pulled a trigger since I left the service. I had enough.”

“For me, it’s basically part of the job. Firearms training is required to get licensed. I have a concealed carry permit.” I extend my index finger straight at him: “So watch it.”

He covers his heart with both hands.

“And you walk around like that?” he asks. “Armed?”

“You mean was I strapping when I followed you?”

“Were you?”

I wasn’t, but I have a feeling for some reason that he wants to hear me say yes, so I do.

“And have you ever had to pull it on someone when you were working?” he asks.

“I’ve made sure somebody knew it was there once or twice. Like we represented a woman who thought her husband had run her over deliberately in their driveway when he was backing out. He was all like, ‘Why would I do that, the mother of my children?’ He was a firefighter, and the cops gave him the benefit of the doubt, but we thought he had a girlfriend, and I managed to find him with her, coming out of his buddy’s apartment. Man, he was angry, like volcanic, cause, you know, suddenly he sees he’s probably going to prison. We were in the parking lot of this complex, and he grabbed a tire iron out of his trunk and started toward me. I just stood my ground and lifted my jacket and put my hand like that.” I draw my right hand up under my left shoulder where the holster was.

“Is that where you carry it?”

“Yeah. Another advantage of big boobs.”

Koob, who’s sprawled on the bed now, hands behind his head, relaxed and naked and looking damned good, gets a kick out of those answers.

I get on my knees to open the gun safe under the bed, and I bring out both my pieces, a Glock 19 and the one I actually prefer to carry, a two-shot Colt derringer that spits out .45 rounds. We lay together, and I let him look them over. And here’s the thing: It is way sexy, handling these weapons. We are both in a heat after only a second. I get on top this time, and right before I’m about to settle on him, he asks, “Are you a good shot?”

“Never miss,” I say.

Super super hot.

Afterwards, he doesn’t wait long to start putting his clothes on. I’m pretty much the same. After I get what I came for, I like to be on my way. I don’t want to pretend to feel things I don’t. That’s why I always prefer to go to the other person’s place.

With Koob, I decide to stay in bed and not follow him to the door, which would seem silly or formal. From the threshold to my room, he looks back. I can tell he doesn’t know what to say.

“Thanks,” I say. “This was great.”

“Definitely,” he answers.

“You know, come by when you like.”

“Sure,” he responds and heads out.

But I know he’ll be coming back.