Wild Awake

thickset body. The guy sitting next to Fink has a square chin and brown eyes and is wearing a denim jacket with fraying cuffs. The accused cigarette thief is not present. I make sure I speak loudly.
    “Hey, Doug.”
    He ignores me. “I’m just saying if I see that son of a bitch come around here again, I’m gonna punch his goddamn lights out,” he says to Fink.
    “Hey, Doug, can you—”
    “And if he says it’s a free country, I’ll say look, buddy—”
    “Um, Doug?”
    The guy in the jean jacket glances my way. “Doug, I think the little lady wants to talk to you.” He elbows him in the side and jerks his chin at me.
    “Oh, hello!” says Doug, as if I’ve just dropped in from outer space. “You’re back.”
    “I’m back.”
    “And you want to ask old Dougie out on a date.”
    Fink and the denim-jacket guy start laughing, wheezing through their teeth. Even though I’m grateful for Skunk’s van, suddenly I wish I had called Lukas’s mom after all—she would have come up to the door with me, and she wouldn’t have taken any shit. I square my shoulders and do my best to channel Petra Malcywyck: “Actually, I’m just here to pick up my sister’s things.”
    Doug slaps the pavement beside him. “Siddown, have a drink with us.”
    He holds out his Coors Light. The thought of sharing beer that’s been backwashed through Doug’s gray lips revolts me. I wonder if Skunk’s following this interaction from the van, but I’m too embarrassed to look.
    “No thanks.”
    “Come on. Have some fun.”
    Doug floats the beer can back and forth in front of me in what is meant to be a tantalizing fashion. When I don’t take the beer, Doug loses interest and becomes reabsorbed into another conversation with his friends, this time concerning a stray dog someone in the building has adopted. They’ve named the dog Jojo, and it trembles all over unless you speak to it very, very softly.
    I realize that if I don’t make a stand, I could be waiting here all day while they drink. I crouch down so my face is level with Doug’s and clamp my hand on his shoulder.
    “Hey! Doug! Let’s do this and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
    Fink and the other guy start giggling again. Doug gives them an exaggerated raise of the eyebrows and says, “The little lady wants me to show her upstairs.”
    At the word upstairs my temples throb. I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to actually go inside. But if Sukey lived here, it couldn’t have been that bad.
    “Why don’t you give old Dougie a hand up, honey.”
    He belches with so much vibrato I wonder if he’s been classically trained.
    My eyes flick to the crutches leaning against the wall. Of course.
    I hold out my arms. He puts down his now-empty beer can and grabs my wrists in a fireman’s hold. The warmth and dryness of his hands surprises me, like baseball mitts left out in the sun. I lean back and pull while he wriggles up on his leg, and when he’s more or less standing he clamps a hand on my shoulder to brace himself while I hand him the crutches. I adjust my footing and we almost lose our precarious balance, but we find it again and Doug gets his crutches in place under his arms and then he’s standing on his own.
    For a second, we eye each other, catching our breath. Doug hop-steps over to the greasy glass door of the Imperial and pulls it open. I wait behind him, casting one last glance at the bright, sunny street before I step inside, hoping it’s what Sukey would have wanted me to do.

chapter ten
    “Me and Sukey-girl were neighbors, eh . We shared a wall.”
    The elevator is broken, so Doug and I are climbing the stairs to the fourth floor. The stairwell is dark, narrow, and carpeted with what appears to be pureed roadkill. So far, we are on step number twelve and making such slow progress I’m pretty sure I’ll have gray hair by the time we reach the fourth floor. He places the rubber tips of his crutches on a step, braces himself, and hoists his good leg up. This process is complicated by the fact that he is totally hammered and keeps putting his crutches at crazy angles and having to start again.
    “We were real good neighbors. Sukey-girl was a sweetie pie. She gave me Snoogie. That’s my kitty cat, eh.”
    As Doug rambles, I remember Sukey dabbing yellow paint on my nose: I have my own studio, Kiri. Right downtown .
    Why would she lie? I would have given her my entire allowance every week. I would have given her my birthday