She steps forward and pulls me into her arms, but I take the path of most resistance and stand rigid in her arms. This is no time for hugging, I think. Hugging time is not now.
“Don’t you worry, dear. We’ll find him. He can’t have gone far.” And with that, I can’t stand on my own anymore, and I fall forward. She’s tiny, but strong, so much stronger than she looks. I clutch at her, and she pats the back of my head. She smells like an old lady should, dusty flowers and old wrapped butterscotch candies.
I can’t help myself as I being to wonder about this woman. This tiny woman who has been front row for the drama of her next-door neighbors for the past three years. This woman who would seemingly drop everything if I needed her to watch Tyson. Questions rise randomly in my mind, shaming me that I don’t know the answers. How did her husband (Gerald? Jonathan?) die? Why doesn’t she have kids? Why does she do what she does for me? What in God’s name possesses this woman to stand here in this early morning, holding onto me while I melt down, while the chemical cocktail that is my being gets shaken and stirred? And then, all of that’s gone in a flash when my true fear comes to the surface, something I have been scrambling with since I first called out my little brother’s name.
“What if she took him?” I moan.
She pushes me back and clutches my face in her hands, her eyes fire, her voice frozen steel: “Then we will fight like hell to get him back. No matter what it takes.”
My phone rings again. Anna. Jesus fucking Christ.
Mrs. Paquinn drops her arms as I connect the call. “Anna, now’s not the time,” I say harshly. “Ty’s—”
“Here with me,” she interrupts. “Bear, what’s going on? He was pounding on my door, and Creed’s saying your mom was there?”
“He’s… what?” I look helplessly at Mrs. Paquinn. She steps up and takes the phone from my hand.
“Anna? It’s Mrs. Paquinn. Fine, dear, thank you for asking. Tyson? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, I don’t know what that’s about. No. No. Just as long as he’s safe. Uh-huh. Bear will be fine. He just had a bit of a scare. No, I’ll drive him over. I don’t think he should be operating a vehicle at the moment. Okay, now. Bye-bye.” She flips the phone closed and hands it back to me.
“He’s with Anna?” I brilliantly deduce.
She nods. “Apparently he showed up this morning, banging on her door. She has him safe and sound. Now go close your door, and we’ll get you to him.” She reaches back into her apartment and grabs car keys off the little table near the entrance. When she turns back around, she sees I haven’t moved. “Derrick, now.”
I shut the door, and she takes my hand and pulls me down the stairs. It’s so bright outside. I try to gather my senses, try to regain control. He’s safe, I tell myself. He hasn’t been taken. He’s safe. The bigger questions try to crowd in, like why would he go to Anna, and why had she already known about what had happened from Creed. I can’t answer those right now, so I push them away.
“We can take my car,” I mumble as she jerks me around the corner to the parking lot.
She sniffs delicately. “That’s sweet of you, but there is no way I am getting in that death trap of yours. I get upset every time I see you and Tyson get in to go someplace because I know that you are going to be driving home one day, and it will catch on fire.”
I don’t think I’m right in the head yet because I can’t understand what she means. “Fire?”
“Fire,” she agrees. “No, we can take my car. My husband bought me this car shortly before he passed, God love him. We never really had nice things, not that those things are ever really important. But one day he drove home in this big beautiful car with a smile on his face like I’d never seen. He told me that, regardless of whatever happened to him, he would go knowing he got to drive me around like a princess.”
“But isn’t your car a piece of shi—”
“You hush your mouth, Derrick McKenna! You’re not too old to have it washed out with a bar of soap.” Her eyes flash in my direction, and I see the smile lurking behind the lines of her face.
“Yes, ma’am.”
We round the last corner and she jingles her keys as we walk up to her early-eighties Caddy. It’s built like a brick shithouse and colored to match. She walks over to the passenger side and unlocks the door, opening it and waiting for me to get in. I sigh and try to think if I’ve ever driven with her anywhere. I ignore every story I’ve ever heard of an old driver barreling through a crowded marketplace. I sit down, a thin cloud of dust springing up around me as my ass bounces in the seat. She slams the door and walks around the front of the car. Her shoulders are almost as high as the hood of the Caddy. I think this maybe is a bad idea, but her threat of soapy waterboarding quells any retort I may have. She gets in the car, and I stare because her head barely clears the steering wheel.
She grins at me and pulls the seat forward, smashing her chest into the horn, which gives an angry gasp. She giggles and reaches down into the door pocket and pulls out sunglasses that cover her entire face. She looks like a 1920s actor in blackface makeup. The car roars to life as I scrabble for my seat belt. There isn’t one.
“That thing broke years ago,” she tells me as she clicks her own belt into place. “I just finally cut it out. But you can be rest assured that whenever Tyson is in this vehicle, he is always safe in the backseat.”
I want to get in the backseat.
She smiles again and hits the gas.
MINUTES later I am discovering what it’s like to be driven by a woman who thinks the world will end if she doesn’t keep the gas pedal firmly against the floor and that apparently there’s no such thing as the “Oh My Fuck God” handle bar for me to hang onto in an early-eighties Caddy that’s the color of shit.
Mrs. Paquinn glances over at me and must see the blood drained from my face as she says, “Oh, dear, you really must calm down. Haven’t I told you that I used to race stock cars as a young woman?”
I feel my shoulders release slightly. “No, I think you must have skipped that part,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Well, good. Because I have never raced stock cars, and that would have been a lie.”
I try to make myself smaller in the seat, thinking about how after all the shitty things that have happened in the last twenty-four hours, it would be a perfect end if I was splattered all over the windshield.