“Would that be helpful?”
Corey was watching the match, still burning near a pile of papers where it landed when it slid from the ashtray.
“Is something wrong?” he asked when she didn’t say anything. He was still watching her, intent. His brow was furrowed, and his eyebrows almost touched, like a “V.”
Maybe it was the expression on her face—is this a bad dream?—or perhaps he smelled smoke. Whatever it was, Dr. Stein finally turned to see that his papers had just caught fire. He picked up a can of Diet Coke and doused the flame. Like it was no big thing. A little pool puddled on his desk.
The doctor had just set his stuff on fire. In his own office. And he was used to it. How was a guy like that ever going to evaluate her? How was he going to understand what it was like for her? What it was like to be her? Without a word, she turned and walked out the door, closing it behind her. The button-sized light was on, and a crabbed-faced schoolgirl who had taken her place in the waiting room shot her a withering look.
Morgan Chandler’s hand rested on the back of Billy’s neck. She was making little stroking motions with her fingers. They were at a coffee place off Pike Street, the Blue City Café, where Morgan and her friends hung out drinking complicated coffee drinks. She said it was “sort of sixties,” whatever that meant.
For a laid-back place, Billy thought it was pricey. His friends didn’t mind. He didn’t know where their money came from, but they always had it. When he scored for them, they would pay in advance. Cash.
Betsy, the café’s proprietor, and raconteur, liked to tell anyone who would listen how, in 1988, she had signed a long-term lease on a hunch. That first year she ran a coffee counter—flanked by a tattoo parlor and a biker bar. Now, the main floor walls were exposed fir posts. Secondhand dark oak tables and chairs contrasted nicely with the fir mullions in the windows. There were well-worn, comfortable couches against the walls. In one corner she had built herself a modern kitchen with a tall glass counter where customers could order exotic coffees or choose from an eclectic menu. In an alcove, there was a rack with publications such as The Stranger, Capitol Hill Times, Seattle Gay News, Skill Shot: Seattle’s Pinball Zine, and other carefully chosen alternative periodicals.
“Nice game, Billy,” a pretty ninth grader said as she walked by.
“Thanks.” Billy raised long arms over his head, stretching. He was dark-haired like his mom, and lanky. He looked casually around the café, sizing up who was with whom and what was what. He still wore his select soccer team sweatshirt. He would hide it before he went “home,” the worst place he had been since the King County juvenile detention center or “juvie.” His foster mother had given him a fucking brown banana for breakfast this morning after he had washed all the sheets she took in for money from some old peoples’ home.
The ninth grader turned. “Come to the girl’s game Friday?”
“I’ll try,” he offered. The best thing about his high school was soccer. Because he was good at it, he had been invited to play on the Chargers, an AAU select team. So now he knew all these kids from Olympic. Two of the Chargers starters were a big deal at Olympic. They ruled on who was in and who was out. And these boys wanted to be his friend. They knew that he went to public school, that he knew his way around Capitol Hill and the “Ave,” and that he could get drugs—all of which they thought was cool. They didn’t know where he lived, or how he scored his dope, or that his mom was a convicted felon.
“She likes you,” Morgan whispered, bringing him back.
“I like you,” Billy whispered and gently kissed her lips. He especially liked how she was so sure of herself. And how she always knew what was the next big thing. Sometimes he was right there. Say with music, a thing he knew about. Other times he just didn’t get what she and her friends were talking about. They would totally lose him on computer software, or new apps, or $75 designer t-shirts that he thought came from Value Village. Morgan said it didn’t matter. What did matter was that she liked him. She had decided that he was really hot—kind of “radical,” whatever that meant—and with these people, somehow that made it so. He wasn’t exactly sure why she thought he was so sexy. Or why she thought it was cool to know funky streets like Pine, or sleep under the freeway. He made a steeple with his long fingers, thinking now about the evening. She would want to do something edgy, maybe get high and check out the Ave, and he would be out late. He would work it out so one of the guys would invite him to stay over. If he had to, he would stay at a squat he knew near the U.
So what if his foster mother got mad. So what? His real mom was out now, and she could deal with his foster mother. Or try to anyhow. It was about time his mom got the picture. Thinking about her made him tense up. She had really fucked things up. So he had learned to live without her.
Two
It was sweet and sour pork. Yeah, she was sure of it. Corey walked up the stairs toward Dr. Stein’s office—again. She had tried the other names they had given her. One of them was a prune-faced female psychologist who made her look at inkblots and talk about whatever came to mind. Mostly what came to mind were prison memories. And they were hard to talk about. She talked about them though. About the violence. How it was part of life. Twice she had hurt people. And both times, afterward, it was hard to breathe. Even now it made her sweat whenever she talked about it. She still felt out of control, stunned by what she had done.
When she finished talking, the woman wanted to know if she had always had a problem with violence. When she tried to explain that she had never been violent, that she wasn’t violent now—that her mom had taught her to stick up for herself, that was all—the woman went on for quite a while about how they could work on it together.
“How long?” Corey asked.
“Say twice a week for as long as it takes.”
“So a week or two?”
The psychologist nodded. “Perhaps a year or two.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That can’t be right.”
And that was that.
The next one was another psychiatrist, smooth—not at all like the pipe smoker—and full of himself. He talked like he had this special understanding of her. He had decided that she was volatile. He wanted her to take this drug, Depakote, to stabilize her moods. When she explained that she had always been a little feisty, and that she would cheer right up when Billy came home, the guy said he couldn’t recommend anything until she took a mood stabilizer for at least six months.
And that was that.
So she was back to sweet and sour pork. The little light was on in the waiting room. She figured that it went on when the office door closed, so you would know not to interrupt. She wondered why he didn’t just lift one of those motel “do not disturb” signs, leave it on the waiting room door. Too cheesy, she guessed. The guy’s mind didn’t work like hers, she was thinking. The light went off, and there he was. Same wool jacket. His hair was too long and mussed up, like an orchestra conductor’s. She walked right into the office before he could make that little gesture with his palm.
Corey sat in the leather chair and looked at her work boots. This was going to be hard, she realized. She waited, unsure what to do. The silence lasted a long time. She inspected every thread of the faded gray rug around her feet.
“Perhaps.” Dr. Stein paused. “Perhaps you’d prefer to see someone else?” he finally asked.
Right, that’s why she was sitting in his worn-out old chair.
“They are supposed to give you other choices…other names.”
The guy slowed down between words, like he wasn’t born here. She glanced up. His eyes were on her now. Locked on. The bushy brows were furrowed in that “V,” she remembered; and now that “V” seemed to laser those locked-on pale blue eyes right into her head. How could an out-of-it guy you could hardly hear be so intense?
“You’ve