Deanna Roy - Forever Innocent

I didn’t really want to leave campus. I hung around the door, waiting on Corabelle, but she kept talking to that girl she worked with. Finally I gave up, heading to my Harley. But instead of driving off campus, I decided to go past the engineering building. Maybe I could convince her to take a ride with me.

Corabelle’s pinked-up friend was standing at the entrance, looking around.

I braked in front of her, and she stuck her hip out, all full of attitude.

“You need to roll right on by,” she said.

“Nice to see you again, too.” I pulled off my helmet. “Where’s Corabelle?”

“Not anywhere you can get to her.”

“She and I have a history.”

“Yeah, that was pretty obvious in the dish room.”

I assessed her. She met my gaze pretty steady, not intimidated in the least. “How long have you known her?”

“Since I started working at Cool Beans.”

“You her friend?”

“I’d take her over you.” She jutted her hip out. She was a live wire, completely the opposite of Corabelle.

“Fair enough. I need to be able to contact her.”

The girl laughed. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to give up her number.”

“It’s important.”

“So is her privacy. You look like a stalker to me.” She tossed her hair behind her shoulders.

“I could say I got it from the TA. She’s in my study group. But it’s serious. Corabelle, she —” How did I persuade this girl? “She’s getting upset with me around.”

“That’s not exactly convincing.”

“I’m the only one who can help her.”

She looked back to the door, and I knew Corabelle was still inside.

“All I know is that she’s been hurt by somebody.” She moved in close and poked my shirt. “And I’m figuring after that scene yesterday that the somebody is you.”

“We grew up together.”

“And she wanted to get away from you. That’s why she changed groups. So I don’t think she wants to hear from you.”

“But this guy?”

“Not your business.”

“They been together long?”

“Again, not your business.”

I couldn’t crack this girl. Corabelle would get mad at me for this, but I had to give it a shot. “We had a kid together,” I said.

The girl’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“He died when he was a week old.”

Her bag slid down her shoulder and rested on the ground. “I didn’t know.”

“We were eighteen. I sort of left her. I shouldn’t have.” I stuck my helmet on the handlebars. “I want to make this right. Help me do that. You saw her yesterday. I think we have a shot at this.”

The girl pushed at her bangs, upset, and I could see she was struggling with what to do.

“What’s she been like?”

She shrugged. “Sad. Alone. She doesn’t go anywhere, do anything.”

Her words were a blow to the gut. “You two? Do you do things?”

“Sometimes. Mainly I see her at work. And we signed up for this class.” She twisted her bright hair in her fingers. “She doesn’t go out.”

So that guy had to be something new. “Corabelle used to light up a room. Her laughter was the happiest sound in the world.”

“I’ve never heard her laugh.”

Another blow. “We were supposed to get married, but the baby came early. Then I left.” I had to get to this girl. I needed to talk to Corabelle, before she got all tied up in that other guy. What was going on with me was pushing her toward him, I was sure of it. “If I could just talk to her, outside of class, I think I could make things right.”

The girl pulled out her phone. “I tell you what. You give me your number, and I’ll give it to her. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll call.”

That was probably about as good as I could get for now. I told her my number and waited as she tapped it in. “You will tell her?”

She shrugged. “If I think it’s a good idea.”

The doors behind her opened and her eyes went wide as Corabelle and another guy came down the steps.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Corabelle saw us and froze. The dude seemed oblivious and tried to lead her away, but she wouldn’t move.

Everything inside me wanted to claw its way out — rage, disgust, and somewhere way down there, despair. I was going to be too late.

She grabbed the boy’s hand, and he looked surprised. They took off along the front of the building and down a path away from us.

I started to swing my leg off the bike even though I was in the middle of the sidewalk, but the girl punched my arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “I’m not going to let you mess with her unless it’s what she wants.”

“I’m what she wants.”

She shook her head. “That’s not what it looks like to me. You need to back off. I don’t care how well you can put a girl up against a dish counter, that boy is bound to be better for her than you.”

I snatched up my helmet and shoved it on. This was pointless. I needed away from all this, and the fire in my belly wasn’t an easy one to quench.

The Harley roared, startling a bunch of birds in the tree next to us. The pink girl backed away. She’d probably delete my number. I’d gotten nowhere. I probably wasn’t going to get anywhere.

I left campus behind to head to the garage. I had a short shift this afternoon, then the night was free. I could see if Mario wanted to shoot pool, but really I knew what I had to do. Scrounge up a bit of cash and head to Zona Norte in Tijuana. There, the girls were easy and paid to like you, and I didn’t have to think about real life at all.

•*´`*•*´`*•

The border guard glanced at my ID and waved me on with a halfhearted “Be careful.”

The half-hour drive from San Diego to Mexico helped put the scene with Corabelle behind me. I felt like I was at my second home as I left the searing lights of the border complex and rolled down Segunda Benito Juarez toward the red-light district.

I knew my way around Tijuana and the women there. No attachments. No risks. Just a simple ease of a simple need by a seasoned pro.

I turned off the highway and onto the main strip. The streets were pulsing with neon signs for hotels and taquerias. Cars rolled slowly, trolling for girls. They stood in their territorial spots, and if one was picked up, another took her place.

They waved as I zipped past, flashing a lot of skin. High heels, leopard prints, red vinyl, and fishnet. Not my scene whatsoever.

The best girls weren’t there, just the ones aiming for turistas. Overpaid and under-interested. And mostly managed. I hated the girls with pimps. They had too many bruises, and I struggled to kill my urge to drag their asses out of there.

Just a couple streets over would be the ordinary girls, the professionals-on-the-side kind, many of them wives or students or making their way on the streets on their own. They kept quiet, avoiding attention, not wanting to catch the eye of anyone who might try to claim them or make their lives more difficult than they already were.

Tonight I wanted Rosa, and the thought of her already had my mood downshifting into something more manageable. Rosa lived with her brother, or so she claimed, and worked in a little farmacia during the day.

In fact, that’s how I met her, just a couple weeks after I left New Mexico.

I’d driven my Camaro through the border states, aimless, exhausted, stopping nowhere. The picture of Finn they passed out at the funeral sat on my passenger seat and I glanced at it often.

The only real thing I’d done as a parent was sign away my kid’s life. And after my stupid exit during the funeral, I was pretty sure the world had decided I was no more fit to be a dad than my own father had been.

Somewhere in Utah I decided that a vasectomy was the way to go. Corabelle had been on birth control, and it hadn’t mattered.

Once I got the idea in my head to do it, I couldn’t think about anything but finding a doctor and getting it done. I had no other goals, no other place to go.

I went to three clinics stateside, trying to find a doctor willing to do a vasectomy on a teenager. No dice. I remembered my grandpa used to get his denture work done in Ciudad Juarez because it was cheaper and there wasn’t any hassle with insurance or paperwork.

I was already west by then, so I sold my laptop for cash and drove along the border until I got to Mexicali. A doctor there sent me on to Tijuana, where I finally found someone who didn’t want to see ID, and cash on the table was good enough to get snipped.

The procedure itself wasn’t too bad. They gave me some pill that made me loopy and sluggish. I felt a needle and some pinching. Afterward, though, walking was impossible. I couldn’t really understand the nurse’s instructions and had no idea what I was supposed to do for pain.

I ended up at the farmacia in hopes of scoring something stronger than Tylenol. The girl behind the counter was beautiful, long black hair curling down her back, not unlike Corabelle’s. She spoke enough English that I could explain what had happened, and she consulted with a man in the back. She gave me a cold pack and a jockstrap and a bottle of pills with the stern instructions to take only two per day.

I was saved. I stayed at a hotel across the street, unable to go any farther, and I remember looking out the window and seeing her close up the shop. The nightlife was colorful and the pain, while duller, kept me up for hours.

In that hot little room, though, the magnitude of what I’d done started to hit. I couldn’t go back to Corabelle, not ever. She’d take it personally. She’d assume I didn’t want a baby with her after all. I would have to stay away. I’d finished us.