Dazzled

by Maxine Nunes

went back out to the street, yanked the ticket off my windshield, pretended to myself that it didn’t hurt, got into the car, and headed home. I drove past squat buildings whose facades looked like the flattened faces of sad old men. There were sallow boys walking the streets with bare concave chests, graying T-shirts hanging from their back pockets. Street hustlers, slouching toward nowhere. I thought of Kyle and his scared eyes. I flashed on how our ties to things we love will sooner or later pull us down. I saw all those ties like so many sticky spider webs trapping us at every turn. Those threads turned hard inside me, dark, sharp, broken connections, a barbed-wire network of memory. What a fucked-up world when love kills and you can’t live without love. I felt brilliant for seeing this with such astonishing clarity. Then I thought about Detective Adder and how maybe there was something between us, and maybe we might even love each other for a while. He would leave me or I would leave him. There would be other men and other loves. And I would always, finally, be alone. I sank into a tepid pool of self-pity, then thought, What the hell, I’d be free! My spirits lifted, then sank again because freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. My mind went on and on like that, and it wasn’t until I pulled into my driveway that I realized it was simply the weed working its way through my brain. And then I remembered why I’d stopped smoking this stuff a long time ago.

“What happened to your ring, Darla. The ring you never took off.” Her color drained because she saw that I knew. I didn’t want to hear it, but I needed to. And once she started to talk about it, I couldn’t stop her.

Darla’s smile was as strange as her eyes. “That was the hardest part. Taking the ring off, slipping it on that dead girl’s finger.” She told me what the dead girl’s hand felt like. Cool. Rubbery. And about the weight of the head on her knee when she unclasped the girl’s locket, a tiny gold heart someone must have given her when she was a child. Darla told me how safe she felt as she did this, and how powerful, because life’s rules were for the weak. The fire died down and the room grew chilly again. I wanted to be anywhere but here, yet I didn’t move. “Her eyes were open, staring like a doll’s eyes,” Darla said, “and they were green, like my eyes. In an ordinary pretty face, like mine. But, of course, it wasn’t my face.” I told her I’d heard enough, but her words ran over mine. “I got Johnny’s gun. I had to do it. I had to be strong. I slammed it down on her face. A rush of air came out of her mouth.” “Stop,” I said.

She looked up at me and said, “Poor Nikki. You

That night I dreamed about him. I dreamed about his skin and the feel of his hair under my hands. I dreamed about his long thighs tangled in mine, his heart beating against my chest. I dreamed about his face hovering above mine and felt his breath warm on my face. Only there was an odd odor. Sour. Salty. Not Adder’s scent. But something familiar about it. Then I thought, There are no smells in dreams, and dreamed I should open my eyes. But before I could, a hand came down on my face, covering my mouth, crushing my nose so that I couldn’t breathe. I flailed out at him, kneed him in the stomach, kicked at his legs. He rammed his forearm into my neck. I began to choke. His face was close to mine. His sour breath carried a whisper: “Where is it? Where the fuck is the dope? And the stuff you stole last night!” He