The Story Sisters

He’d met Hector when they both were seventeen, soon after the death of his dog. He was a loner to the nth degree, wary at first, but they became fast friends when Hector came to tell him one of the worst offenders living underground had decided he wanted Lorry’s platform space. Together they’d waited for their adversary in the dark. The interloper was a man whose wife had left him, moving up into the world. He was out of his mind on drugs. To chase him off they had tied sheets to the metal ladders that led to the world above and set up a fan. When they switched on the fan, the white sheets blew out like apparitions in the dark. Their enemy raced off screaming of ghosts. He’d never returned, and their brotherhood had begun. A friend who had your back in a world of cons and thievery was truly a brother. They had a perfect, easy scam they ran in Penn Station. They helped tourists with their luggage, taking them down a staircase that descended three stories to an abandoned platform. Once the tourist was disoriented, unable to find his way back, they would shake him down, asking for a twenty to lead him back up to the street. It had worked fine until the night when it all went wrong. They were sitting on the floor of the train terminal, drinking cups of black coffee the counter girl at Dunkin’ Donuts gave them for free just for being such cute boys, when they spied a confused-looking man.

“You take him.” Lorry was feeling lazy, so he stretched out his legs. Let Hector have some fun.

“Back in a flash.” Hector grinned, leaped up, and went to the tourist’s aid.

Lorry felt a chill. That happened to him sometimes, along his back and neck. He usually knew whom to trust and who was disloyal, who was an easy mark and who was nothing but trouble. On this night he convinced himself that his radar was off. He shook off his fear. He chatted up some girls, hung around with some buddies. An hour later he knew something was wrong. His brother in the world of mayhem still hadn’t returned.

He was the one who found Hector’s body, sprawled on the platform, his throat cut. A black pool of blood slid beneath him like oil seeping down to the tracks below.

Elv covered her ears, but Lorry made her listen.

In memory of his friend, Lorry set a rosebush on the platform; it bloomed, but the roses were black. He used heroin for the first time that night. He turned to the witch and she brought him comfort. It was easy enough to find in the tunnels; it was another gate, into another world. It didn’t mean you forgot those you lost. That was why he had the rose and thorns tattooed on his hands, a memorial that would last. There wasn’t a day that went by when he didn’t regret sending Hector to do a job he should have done himself. Lorry was bigger, stronger; he could have fought the assailant off. In the end, their intended victim had been the better, more merciless thief. As a final insult, he’d taken Hector’s gold ring, the only thing Hector had inherited from his father. Lorry still looked at people’s hands, searching for the person who wore that stolen ring. He kept a knife with him at all times in case he found him. But even if he got his revenge, he was the real culprit. He would have to live with the guilt, and so would she.

Elv told him she couldn’t. It was too much. He kissed her ardently, but she was listless, a gorgeous rag doll. She saw the accident whenever she closed her eyes, unless she was high. She wouldn’t get hooked on anything. She just needed to stop thinking. She roped her arms around Lorry, begging him for it, and although he shook his head, she knew he’d give her whatever she wanted.

After some time, Elv got out of bed. She brushed her hair, washed her face. But she never looked in the mirror and she didn’t let Lorry know how much junk she was shooting. Sometimes she went down past Twenty-first Street and bought it herself from a dealer she’d become acquainted with. Life was but a dream, wasn’t it? It was the way black roses grew in the dark, searching for sunlight when there wasn’t any. The old ladies in the neighborhood clucked their tongues when Elv went by, on her way to score, then to sit on a bench, where she nodded out while the buses roared by.

Once she glanced up to see Lorry walking along. He looked menacing, a man most people would want to avoid. He was carrying a TV and was clearly in a rush. He spied her and for a moment it seemed that he might turn and walk away. Instead he came over, leaned down to kiss her, then wedged the TV between his body and the bench.

“Someone was throwing this away,” he said.

There was a price tag still on it. Elv hadn’t thought about where their money was coming from. It didn’t surprise her that Lorry had schemes. He was cagey and smart; he had to be.

“Okay,” Elv said.

“This is what I do,” Lorry reluctantly admitted.

People had to live, didn’t they? If a lion took a lamb for its supper, did anyone complain or say it was unnatural? She went with him sometimes when he drove out to Long Island, to wealthy neighborhoods where the people were so rich they wouldn’t miss a few things. And if they did, all they had to do was phone their insurance companies and everything would be replaced within the week. Elv sat behind the wheel of the car, the engine running, the headlights low, chewing on her lip while Lorry robbed houses. She thought of herself as an accomplice, and she savored the word.

She felt alive in the car as the scent of exhaust filtered in through the window and the sky was so perfect and black. It made her think of Hector and the pool of blood and the black roses. In neighborhoods where people slept through the night, Lorry climbed through windows that were left open. He rattled locks and slipped through doors. He carried a crowbar, but rarely used it. He wanted to be invisible. He often found valuables in unexpected places. In shoes, for instance, in vegetable bins, in kitchen cabinets.