The next-door neighbors’ dogs started barking along the back fence.
Anyway, David said, Django’s nightshirt caught fire. Florine tried to smother it with a blanket, but her long hair went up in flames too. Django eventually smothered the flames, dragged her outside, but it was too late, David said. Django was devastated. His wife lost. His fret hand and a leg severely burned. Scar tissue formed on the hand until it resembled something like a claw. Essentially he had to relearn to play the guitar from scratch, David said. He paused and listened intently to Django Reinhardt’s strumming. “Two functional fingers on his fretting hand,” David said. “Two!”
They sat there in the buzzing silence after the song. David fidgeted, took a drag off his cigarette. Leaned over and moved the needle on the record. A jangly, fast-tempo song began to play.
Someday, when you grow lonely
Your heart will break like mine and you’ll want me only
After you’ve gone away…
Rosa felt dizzy. Red celluloid flowers bunched in her head. The room smelled like burning hair. She got up and started for the bathroom, but David stood up and blocked her way. She tried to maneuver around him but her movements seemed slow and clumsy and she wondered for a moment if she was asleep. David grabbed her hand, gripped her hard around the waist and attempted to dance her around the room, to heave her roughly over boxes of books and stacks of 78s. Empty beer bottles clattered to the floor.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, pulling away.
“We’re dancing,” David said, smiling, his eyes jittery in his head. He tried to grab her hand but she pulled away from him, moved toward the back door. He swung his arm out and hit her in the side of the head with the flat of his palm. Everything grew bright and hot. There was a ringing in her ears. In front of her, his face a knot of hatred and contrition. He said he was sorry, that it was an accident. He tried to take her in his arms. Rosa shoved him and he stumbled back, catching his heel on a box of 78s. His body seemed to pause in the air for a moment before he fell and shattered the glass tabletop.
23
FROM THE SIXTH floor of the police station, Michael could see the cars and trucks passing along the interstate below. He followed a northbound red Boar’s Head truck until it rose onto the upper ramp, where it would pass beneath a billboard with the girls’ faces. He never drove north along the interstate and had nearly forgotten why. He never went to Juan in a Million anymore for breakfast because he thought he’d seen the older man eating migas there once. He never told anyone about the camera or tripod lighting or DVDs he’d found in the back of the Volvo. Oh, that, the younger man had said, later, as they drove over to the ice cream shop, as if he’d been meaning to mention it all along. What good is a fire insurance policy without documentation? The younger man smiled in a way that made Michael think of someone leaning in for a kiss. Outside, purpled lawns and houses drifted past. Michael remembered an erection swelling in his jeans and the sudden urge to leap out of the car.
He would have left town already with Alice if it hadn’t been for the recent court visitation order Lucinda had filed through an attorney—a ploy of some kind, he supposed, to eventually get money out of him or maybe out of his dad. How had things gotten so out of hand?
Outside the jail, Michael carried Alice across the intersection at Seventh Street and then under the interstate. Eighteen-wheelers roared overhead. The smell of exhaust made him nauseous. He asked if Alice was hungry and she said the nice lady gave her a Happy Meal and a vanilla milkshake. She was tired and dreamy-eyed now and only wanted to be carried. As they passed under the interstate, Michael thought he saw one of the plainclothes detectives who’d picked them up earlier parked in a white Mercury. They’d want to talk to him again tomorrow, to clear up a few things, Detective Morrow had said. Maybe they’d need to take a drive over near where the ice cream shop used to be. But he wasn’t under arrest, no. There was no need for that. They were just talking. Michael could still feel the weight of Detective Morrow’s hand on his shoulder.
He went through a mental list of all the things he and Alice would need, but it seemed to run on and on like water from a tap. Alice asked to ride on his shoulders, so he raised her up over his head. The wind was blowing from the south now, and the late-afternoon sun warmed his back. He felt oddly at ease for a moment—as if for once his options were clear. As if every moment now had a cellophane sheen that he might poke through to what was really happening.