Clown Girl - Monica Drake [69]
Italia slammed against the door and everything shook—the door, the floor below us, the house. The futon slumped to the ground, a casualty of our war. I was trapped. Trapped in a room of small glass windows.
“Open the door,” Nadia hissed, breathless. The wood made the sound of splintering, giving way. “You put that piss on my shelf on purpose; you set me up.”
“It wasn’t your shelf,” I yelled back. “It was in the side door. Communal!”
She body-slammed the door again. “It was my part of the communal rack. You knew it.”
“Your part?” Clearly, she was crazy. “We don’t designate on the communal side.” My voice trembled. “That’s what communal means.”
“I’ll kill you, girl. Kill you—” Methodically she slammed into the cracking door.
“You put that banana in my bed,” I yelled back. I couldn’t run if I tried—my torn ligament was shredded after the sprint in the kitchen. It was the kind of pain that deserves a name, like a special enemy, a military tactic, or a new disease in search of a salable angle: Hip Socket Hell. The Rotator Awareness Plan. I yelled, “It breaks a house rule, coming in my space.” I picked up a stretched canvas and swung the hard corner edge at the glass panes of my tiny windows.
“What’s going on?” It was Herman now, outside the door. “What’re you doing, babe? Stop, you’re breaking the door.”
“I’m going to kill her,” Italia said. “Giving me hep C, the swine flu, whatever’s in her piss.”
“She put a banana in my bed!” I yelled. “I was asleep. And I don’t have hepatitis.” I hit the windows again with the wooden edge of the canvas. Glass rained down around my feet.
“She put piss in the fridge in my area—”
I yelled, “It wasn’t your area, you know it.”
“She was at Hoagies and Stogies—”
“Back off, sweets,” Herman said. To me he yelled, “What’s going on? What’re you breaking?” Then to Italia, he said, “Babe, listen. Back off, for real. Settle, OK?”
Herman was big, but Nadia-Italia was crazy. I said, “Call the cops. Quick!” I swung at a second pane of glass, building my escape route. “Herman, hurry!”
“I’m not calling the cops, Nita. I’m not calling your cop boyfriend on my girl. This isn’t a time for jealousy, or whatever feelings you still have going on—”
“Herman! Call any cop you want.” I swung again. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Open the door. What’re you breaking?” Then, to Italia, Herman said, “Let me talk to her. Alone.”
Two windows were broken out, but the windows were still too small to fit through. I needed at least four cleared. I’d have to smash the thin wood in between. I pulled glass shards from the wooden frames. I ran my hand over the jagged edge, to loosen broken pieces.
Hack too. She was still there, outside.
“Hey, don’t spit on the floor, man. Go upstairs,” Herman said. “No joke. Wait for me.” Then he said, “Nita, calm down. Don’t break anything, OK? I’ll talk to her. Open the door.”
Italia spit again. I held a bloody finger—cut on the shards—to my mouth. “I’m not coming out. Not as long as she’s there. Not without the cops.”
I waited, still and silent, until I heard them walk away. What if they came around to the outside? Now I had a hole in my windows. I held the canvas like a shield and grabbed a juggling pin, ready to swing for the bleachers.
There was the quiet rattle of a wire inside the door handle, a sound as tiny as mice doing orthodontic work. The door popped open. It swung outward—the dresser and the slumped dead body of the mattress hadn’t done a thing by way of a barricade.
Herman’s head popped over the top of the dresser, a puppet show, face puffy, his hair in a tangled knot. Puppet Herman said, “Nita, it’s four in the morning. Don’t you ever take time off?”
I dropped the tools of my trade—the canvas and the juggling pin, shield and weapon—and fell to my knees. Heartsick. Exhausted. “She’s a total loose cannon.”
“You’re bleeding.” He reached a hand over the top of the dresser, as though to pet a dog, but couldn’t reach me. His arm flapped in the air.
It was true.