Leo Rache. Read online

  For two shifts, she didn’t seem to be in her room.

  When she didn't pay for another week, he was more brought down than relieved. He wanted to stand in her empty room before it was cleaned, but his schedule didn’t allow it.

  ***

  He got off the last train of the night at the wrong stop.

  It wasn’t like the old metro line, just a question of walking a bit, he was absolutely no place. He figured it’d take two hours to walk, even if he knew the way.

  He finished the joint he'd smoked half of. It wasn’t a bad area, at least. He didn’t work until the next evening, decided to just deal with it, the night a slow blur of talking to himself, nodding off on benches.

  The train got him home before the sun was up. Two people were using the kitchen, one saying Hello the other not looking up.

  -Can I use the shower before you? the one said, mouthful of English muffin.

  ***

  He got home from work, discovered his coffee pot wasn’t in his room. He found it in the kitchen, his name now written on it. He'd been told not to have appliances in his room, but was upset nonetheless. He wanted to have a word with the owner, but couldn’t work up the nerve.

  Blake called, said he wasn’t going to be able to make it into the city, as planned. Leo tried not to let on he was bothered.

  He found a restaurant nearby that was open twenty four hours a day, felt a little better about everything.

  Someone called his phone from a number he didn’t recognize. He let the call go to message. Silence for twenty seconds before it cut off.

  xxi.

  Leo had agreed to be the one present for the walk through at the old apartment. Additionally, he was to wait around for Blake's ex, Darla, to show up for two boxes of her belongings.

  The empty space seemed vast, especially with the freedom to drift in and out of Blake's room. Some odds and ends had been left in cabinets, which he imagined is why the trash bags had been left on the counter.

  He smoked a cigarette out the window.

  The woman who inspected the room took a long time, but said the full deposit would be returned. He asked if he could wait around since Darla hadn’t yet shown up. He couldn't, so he took her boxes with him.

  ***

  He only vaguely recalled where Darla lived, not enough to find it. She called that evening, stumbled over herself with apology, asking where he was.

  -I'm just having something to eat. I have your things.

  She sounded thrilled and he agreed to bring them over. She gave her address, which was nowhere near where he'd been thinking, said she could come get him, if it was easier.

  -No it's alright. You'll be around?

  The boxes were irritating to carry, but he certainly wasn’t going to take a taxi. He eyed a shopping cart left randomly against a lamppost, went as far as smoking a cigarette next to it before moving on.

  ***

  Darla tossed him a pack of cigarettes, saying she got them free from her boyfriend's work.

  -Blake was always kind of a baby, she said out of nowhere.

  He nodded, looked at the things on the wall, some he’d picked out with Blake.

  -I actually only stayed with him to get at you at least once, she laughed.

  -Is that true? he said, actually curious, not expecting a reply.

  She undid the side of her skirt, lowered the hip of her panties an inch.

  -My boyfriend’s at work, she said. I’m his ride.

  -I don’t know if can do that to Blake, you know?

  She slid her panties down, left them circled around one ankle.

  -I'm not asking you to do anything to Blake.

  ***

  He dreaded learning Darla had told Blake. She’d assured him she wouldn’t, that she really just wanted to be with him once, was totally in love with her boyfriend. She'd called him one for her collection, hadn’t answered when he asked Collection of what?

  Getting in from work, he found his coffee pot had been emptied and cleaned. There was also a note on his door saying he hadn’t done his assigned cleaning, so that was being added to his rent. He wrote a note saying he’d no intention of doing any cleaning, suggested a permanent increase. In the morning, a note on his door said a permanent increase was unacceptable, that two more occasions of negligence would result in eviction.

  xxii.

  He’d saved a fair amount of money being frugal, made notes about spending it. His legal fine, first, then he needed to arrange to see Lea. He'd been unable to get shut of the idea, it’d become absolute.

  He worked out his time off request, preoccupied.

  The hotel phone rang, the line quiet until Anna answered his third Hello.

  -Coming back, are you? he smiled, pacing in one spot.

  -I hope not, she said, took a pause and said I'm sorry.

  -You don't have to be sorry for anything, he said, not even thinking what she might mean.

  She sighed, silence again.

  -Where are you?

  -I'm at home. My kids are here.

  He nodded, waited.

  -Tell me where that is, I'm off in two hours.

  ***

  It took awhile to find her house, streets, avenues, courts, lanes named the same thing. When he saw her in her backyard, her kids playing, he gestured was it alright to approach. She seemed to consider, then nodded, approaching him alongside the house. She sighed, said he couldn't kiss her or anything.

  -No, I know that.

  They talked a minute before he said she seemed upset. It took awhile to get her to say she needed money.

  -Twelve hundred dollars, but even eight if you have it.

  She clapped her hands at the kids about something.

  -I'll be able to pay you back.

  -Anna. He paused. Eight hundred’s enough?

  She started to say something, had to turn, clap at the kids, again.

  ***

  She called that night. He'd arranged twelve hundred in an envelope, had another four out, thinking he'd add it in. He didn't ask what the money was for, told her Stop apologizing, I have the money so you have the money.

  -Are your kids living with you, now?

  This animated her, she talked about them awhile before making herself wind down.

  He said he’d bring the money before going to work, as she needed it right away. She wasn’t at home, so he put it in through a window they'd agreed she'd leave open a bit.

  She didn't call that night, but left a message at three in the morning. He watched the phone ring, smoking a cigarette on the steps up to his room.

  ***

  He couldn't get the next week off, but arranged that if he could get two of his shifts for the week after covered, he could have the others off.

  He called the courthouse, asked what would happen if his payment was late. They told him flatly that a warrant would be issued, his penalty reevaluated.

  -How long before a warrant is issued?

  -As soon as you don't pay.

  He put clothes in his backpack, left it in his desk chair all week. The bus he'd arranged for left early in the morning from a station he could walk to.

  He dreamt about getting there but Lea had moved, again. It wasn’t upsetting, though. When he woke, he was smiling, rubbing his arms.

  xxiii.

  It was three days out by bus. The stops seemed constant, stretching on meaninglessly. He liked

  walking around the rest areas, parking lots, pacing out his cigarettes. He bought coffee from a machine one evening, raising a toast to himself, figured it was officially too late about his fine, his name entered into some database of offenders.

  When the lights were out on the bus, he liked how most people slept, the ones who didn't keeping quiet, reading paperbacks, listening to music with their eyes open.

  He was left off in Lea's town at night, nothing open except gas stations. He took out a room for four days, tucked his last fifty-three dollars in his cigarette pack, lit the half joint he'
d been saving.

  ***

  He found Lea's apartment building, rang the bell even though her boyfriend might've answered, smiled when Lea did.

  -Thinking he should've come up with a better plan he said Is that Lea? It's Leo.

  She was laughing when she answered back, the static making him have to ask her to repeat herself.

  She came down, gave him a hug and told him his hair looked awful.

  -What are you doing here? she was smiling, trouble getting a cigarette lit.

  -I'm in town a few days.

  -She laughed at that. Man, you need to use a telephone. Let's get something to eat.

  He lagged a bit behind when she took out her phone, but when she slowed to let him catch up he casually asked who it'd been.

  ***

  They went to her friend’s apartment to feed some cats. She sat in the recliner, he on the sofa. As though suddenly remembering, she asked where more poems for her were. He gave her an intent look, waited until she squinted at him.

  -I want to write a poem on you.

  She laughed and he let her.

  -On me where?

  -Your back. And all over you.

  A cat walked behind his head. She stubbed a cigarette, one eye closed.

  -That isn't a euphemism, is it?

  -No.

  -I don't think my boyfriend would like that, much.

  -My girlfriend would hate it. So I’m not telling her.

  She fixated on a thought, absently touching at a cat.

  -I'll wash it all right off, he said.

  ***

  She was out of town with her boyfriend’s family until Thursday, but they agreed to meet Friday afternoon. This required Leo to alter his stay at the hotel, arranging to get the room starting Thursday, leaving him no place to stay for two nights, but he kept that to himself.

  He'd made her say I promise a dozen times, though by the third, when she'd said it without laughing, looking at her coat sleeve, he knew she’d show up. The night he had his room he couldn't sleep, watched television, fascinated by everything.

  The town didn't have a metro and he knew the local bus wouldn’t let him sleep on it.

  He stole a pack of pens from the drugstore, disguised as buying cigarettes.

  xxiiii.

  He spent the morning Lea was to arrive using the laundry room, trying to think of a first thing to write on her. It was ridiculous, the little scripts he ran in his mind.

  She showed up half-hour early, shyly took off her coat, asking why he didn’t run the heat.

  -I only have until four, now, so I tried to get here early. Will that be long enough?

  -Of course it will. I don’t have it memorized or anything, but that should be good.

  She said he couldn’t write on her feet, because she wasn’t taking off her socks and to get her some of the wine she saw in the half empty bottle he’d forgotten all about.

  ***

  He wrote in silence ten minutes, on his knees at the bedside, her shirt lifted, the first words starting just below her left shoulder blade.

  -Is it alright to talk?

  -Sure.

  -I don’t want to mess you up.

  He chuckled, intent on the letters he was shaping.

  -Would it be easier if I just undressed?

  He said it would. When she was down to socks and her undershirt, removing her panties, she said Get undressed, too. He did so. Before he wrote again, she gestured she wanted to look at him.

  -You’re very pretty, she said.

  -Take off your socks.

  -You’re going to write something on my feet?

  -No.

  She lay back on her stomach, said he could take them off if he wanted.

  ***

  He became aroused, only noticed when his erection first touched her. He genuinely apologized, but she just laughed, said Don’t be an idiot. Each successive time it touched her, he just smiled, said Ignore that and she nonchalantly said Oh, I am.

  Writing covered her lower back, both of her sides, the backs of her thighs, her stomach, an arc from shoulder top over collar bone to shoulder top. When he was through, she asked if he was going to copy it out.

  -No.

  She stood at the mirror, twisting her body to look at herself.

  -Copy it out for me, then.

  He used eleven sheets from the notepad the hotel provided. Without reading them, she tucked them in her purse.

  ***

  The scrubbing had to be a little bit harsh, rough hotel towels, the lousy bar of hand soap. She sat on the desk chair and he dipped the washcloth in water he’d filled the ice bucket with. Her skin was soft, became raw and she made him verify that there were no faint traces, said she didn’t want to have to take a shower, right away.

  -I feel like a bruise all over, she said, touching where he’d just dried.

  Her phone rang. She looked at the number, let it ring, said she really needed to go, there was some mandatory thing for her job.

  He smoked three cigarettes, naked, looking at the closed door, finished the wine except what she’d left in her glass.

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