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Four-Letter Words(continued) Late that night, RJ burst into our little room, a paper bag under his arm. He pulled out a can of beer. "Gotta come up with some cash," he said after a long drink. "Gotta come up with some soon or some asses will be out on the street." He took another swig then winked at me. He flopped on the bed, polished of the can, then started on another. He obviously wanted to be alone with his beer, so Emma and I went down to the lobby and played rummy with a worn-out deck of cards. We played dozens of hands to pass the night, and as we laid out runs and threes-of-a-kind, or floated until a discard, I talked about the stars, and Emma listened. Take a look at the stars next time you're in a rural setting. You'll never forget it. Emma would have understood, but her mind had been elsewhere on the night we escaped. What I'd like to understand is why she chose me. What was so special about me that made her snatch me out of the house like some woodland sprite? I'd wished she'd been a sprite and that I'd had magical powers, powers over things like life and time, powers I could draw from the stars and spread about like some winged mythological creature. But if that were true, I wouldn't be writing this. So why am I even mentioning it? Because wishing is a part of life. I sure can wish up on some shit. TV of the mind. Maybe wishing should be a condition. Wishing: a condition determined as the state between living and wasting time. You think Webster would be interested? RJ rolled out of bed the next afternoon and went out to explore the town. I was looking forward to a fixed car and Mexico, but he returned that evening with the same grim expression. He threw me a handful of change and told me to do laundry in the Laundromat across the street until I ran out of money. I didn't mind pulling my own weight, and it was something to do that didn't involve RJ, though I'd have liked Emma to come. When the money ran out a couple hours later, I returned to the hotel room to find Emma gone. "She started a new job," said RJ. Being alone with RJ in that dismal hotel depressed me. He should have been working, I thought. Emma was supposed to be looking after me. I couldn't stand it. All the noise floating under the door and through the paper-thin walls: Arguments, moaning, television blather, laughter bouncing down the hallway, sirens cruising by on the street. But RJ's smoldering rage overpowered all that just by laying silently in bed. It kept me on edge and made time nibble past like a cow in the pasture. All I could do was stare blankly at the mind-numbing TV and wish for Emma to walk through the door. But wishing got me nowhere. It was only something to hold onto through the misery. With all the energy I spent at it, though, my stomach began to protest. It barely gave me enough courage to ask RJ for something to eat. "Dammit, kid. Didn't you get something out of the machines?" "You told me to wash clothes," I whispered. "You fucking idiot. Can't you think for yourself?" He stuffed a hand into his pocket, pulled out a few dollar bills and a handful of change, and threw the lot at me. "Go buy something. And next time, use your fucking head." Use my head. I thought I used my head by doing exactly as he'd told me. And what would he say if I hadn't? Follow the rules. I've heard it my whole life. The hotel vending machines were out-of-order, so I ended up in the convenience store next to the Laundromat, where I found at least a modicum of comfort between the aisles of candy, junk food, and ready-to-eat-meals. If I browsed slowly enough, Emma might be back by the time I was done. When I returned, the door to our room was locked. I figured they wanted some privacy, so I slid to the floor and pulled out the plastic silly straw with a five-pointed star forming the twist that I'd bought for Emma. I held it up to the light and, with one eye closed, imagined it as a distant heavenly body and my eye the universe's most powerful telescope. I was lost in the wonderment, concepts like distance and dimension floating around in my head, when a stout, balding man stumbled out of the room across the hall, a reddening handkerchief held to his nose and his shirttail half out of his pants. He offered me a "Fuck you, kid" glare on his way down the hall. Then I saw something else. You said this would make me feel better. But I don't feel good thinking about Emma rising from the bed in the other room, gathering a sheet to cover her breasts, her eyes like two vacuous caverns. I didn't understand why her legs were bare, why the linen was strewn over the side of the bed, why her clothes lay in a pile on the floor. And why RJ was ripping bills from one hand to the other in a sharp, stroking rhythm, his bulky iron ring a prominent spike. How come the world has to be like that, Dr. Carter? Why are there bastards who treat others so? But I am the monster. Satan incarnate. A terrible person deserving nothing but death for killing another human being. Does it matter what this person was like, what he did to others? No! Not to the laws of this country. We can't put a value on human life. Let a soldier — a twenty-year-old entrusted with an automatic weapon on foreign soil and told to be on the lookout for IEDs, who when home on leave can't buy a beer because he's not old enough to handle that level of responsibility — let him kill and it's just the reality of war. But at home, murder is murder. Is it any wonder we're always so morally confused? What did you get me into, Dr. Carter? This was something I wanted to I leave in my past. I thought I had. Emma and RJ haven't been part of my life for fourteen years. You think I enjoy reliving all this? The empty look in Emma's eyes after her bouts with John after John. I didn't understand the grip of heroin: didn't smell RJ's beer on her breath. To what could I attribute her change? She wasn't eating. She didn't complain about anything. Not even about the strange men rutting allover her at all hours of the day. Emma was gone. RJ replaced her with a zombie. Through the next week, he would send me to the store, and when I'd return, I'd be locked out of the room. Couldn't hang out in the lobby, not without Emma. Several times I got the urge to just walk away with the change RJ gave me and not come back. Emma had shown me that you could leave behind whatever you didn't like. I could do it on my own if I had to. That's what I was thinking after yet another solo trip to the store
that ended at a locked door in the hallway. I'd slid to the floor and
begun to slowly devour an apple pie. Halfway through, Emma opened the
door and stuck On the nightstand, loosely wrapped in a sock, lay the factory of evil
that kept Emma in her hazy state of horror.
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