Genius Hesitates

The frame of your front door is ajar and it’s not the first time. You open it and look outside. There sitting conspicuously on your door mat is an old beaten up suitcase with a small black book. A note inside, “For you and your mom.”

You lug the broken suitcase best you can, the wheels barely budge; you don’t recognize it, but you know he was here again. It frightens both you and your mother. He’s drinking and you’re stuck hiding in this noisy, run-down apartment on the edges of North Hollywood.

“Mom”

She comes out of your shared room. You don’t exchange words, the silence between you is thick, full of a fear that again the gate outside of the complex didn’t keep him out. How does he get in, how does he get to the door. These questions fill the air around you, without a word, you open the thing with the zipper stuck. You see what’s inside.

Cash. Stacked the way Al Pacino would. It doesn’t surprise either of you. You don’t question whether he is or isn’t involved in romanticized crime. You've used it to your advantage enough times, like when you crashed your car into a pickup truck on the 101. Dad and his friends pulled up.

They stepped out of the black SUV dressed in all black suits smoking, spitting, grunting the way men do when the roads close and the lights dim and it’s just them and you, ready to be a victim of something.

The man in the pickup truck comes out, unscathed. His bumper doesn’t have a scratch, while your car is fully caved in.

He was complaining about his neck before he faced a caravan of soviet style bandits. He backs into his car and drives off. Your dad gestures to his friends and comes to speak to you, softer now, the way a father does when he imagines losing you.

“Were you texting?”

“No, I was reaching for a CD” a story he won’t believe. He can’t decipher truth being built entirely in deceit, thinking earnestly you don’t notice.

“We were driving back from the funeral when you called, I couldn’t get here fast enough.”

“Do you think it was suicide?”

“No, he has a family. He fell asleep on the wheel. He never listened. He had to drive the truck back from Rochester and get the new load.”

“I’m sorry dad.” A man spits behind you.

You break the zipper open and start counting. It must be $20,000, more than your mom’s annual salary.

The fear turns.

How did he get this? Again you don’t speak questions.

The man has been drinking himself to a violence neither mother nor daughter could tolerate. You left and found solace in this broken down shelter of a home. A bed you share and try not to worry, even when you see him outside your window.

He owns guns that cannot be taken away. He threatens and the state tells you it’s out of their control.

The money piles thick and you need it. This will afford you rent, food, necessities to survive. Yet, you’re unsure if it comes with a price.

You flip through the black book and it’s empty. Only the first page etched with the fever of a man breaking. “For you,” displaced because of me, “and your mom,” bruised and left to be cared for by her child.

The money sits still on the living room floor and you hear the door creak.

The End