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What’s The Damage?

By Michael Ayoob

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1.

Above all, she wasn’t pretty. She had small dark eyes and a thin dash of a mouth. Her hair was short, greasy, and combed forward. It looked like it had been dyed green once, the green now fading into her natural dark brown. Three metal rings looped through one of her eyebrows, one through her nostril. She wore baggy overalls and had a tattoo on her bicep.

Torty watched her as she opened the back doors of a van parked on the street. He lumbered toward her, lugging his canvas sack full of newspapers. He dropped the sack to the sidewalk, took a Pittsburgh Post to the front porch of yet another house, opened the storm door, dropped the newspaper into that small gap of space between the storm door and regular door, and closed the storm door quickly before the newspaper might spill out.

There was no other way to deliver newspapers on Fernhill Avenue. Of course he would’ve liked to roll them up with a rubber band and throw them onto each porch. However, most of Torty’s customers were quite old, and they demanded that he leave the newspaper between the doors. If he didn’t, he could count on fewer tips and more reprimands when he came around to collect his weekly fee.

“Oh, stop complaining,” Dad always said. “You could use the exercise.”

He knew his father was right. ‘Torty,’ after all, was short for ‘Tortoise,’ and ‘Tortoise’ was what a coach once called him when he tried out for Little League.

So Torty shouldered his canvas sack and marched on toward the next house, where she was moving in. Now crouching in the back of the van, she tried to pull something black and heavy. Whatever it was wasn’t budging, and she was alone.

“Need a hand?” Torty said.

“Yeah, thanks,” she said without turning around. Then she did, saw him, and laughed. “Shit, I’m sorry. You’re...”

Too short. Too fat. She didn’t have to finish. He was in the ninth grade, and he’d heard it all by the time he’d finished the third.

If she were pretty, Torty would have been intimidated and kept walking. Since she wasn’t, he could afford to smile back and say, “Come on, I can help.”

“If you want, you can try to get around the other side of it. Give it a push, maybe.”

It wasn’t until he wedged himself against the black object that Torty realized what it was - an amplifier for an electric guitar. He gave it his best push, and with her pulling, it slid free.

“Thanks!” She lifted the amp out to the sidewalk by herself.

“Sure,” Torty said. He hopped out of the van and stood there, facing her for a brief and awkward moment.

“Melissa,” she said, and offered her hand.

“Oh, I, uh...” he showed her his ink-stained fingers.

Melissa shook his hand anyway. “Don’t you have a name? Or should I just mutter ‘Oh, I, um, uh,’ when I see you?”

“Torty,” he said. “Well, really, it’s ‘Henry,’ but everybody calls me ‘Torty.’”

“I like ‘Henry’ better.”

She dropped his hand. He already sensed the letdown in having to return to his route. So he lingered, then said, “Um, okay. Well, I’ll see you later,” and started away.

“You’re not much of a businessman, are you, Henry?”

He stopped, looked back at her.

“When my little brother had a paper route, they used to give him something like forty bucks for every new customer he signed up,” Melissa said.

“Oh! Yeah! Yeah, sure, I, uh, didn’t even think of that. Do you - do you want me to start you?”

“ASAP.” She hugged the amplifier, lifted it with a grunt. “You can throw the paper, too. You don’t have to drop it in my door.”

Torty watched her carry the amplifier to her porch, then took up his sack and walked on. He worked faster than usual for the rest of that day, inexplicably motivated to be a better paper boy.

---

Unfortunately, Melissa turned out to be a lousy customer. Six weeks had already passed since Torty added her to the route, but she’d never paid him.

Collecting was unpleasant enough. Once a week, he would revisit every one of the sixty-two houses on his route, knock on each door, and tell each customer how much money he or she owed The Post. Usually enough of them paid to cover Torty’s weekly bill to The Post, plus enough of a profit to keep him going from week to week.

Some customers would tell him to come back later. Others would claim that they’d already paid and he’d have to convince them otherwise with his receipt book. Others would never be home, even though he’d stop three, four times in a week. Others would have the TV or stereo blaring loud enough to drown out the doorbell.

Melissa never seemed to be home whenever Torty came to collect, until the day when he heard the guitar. From inside her house came a rapid stutter of noise. Notes electrified and distorted, jagging into each other and trotting out a numbingly simple tune.

Torty never cared much about music. Just as some people rarely go to the movies or watch TV or read books, he rarely listened to the radio. Melissa’s playing did nothing to change that. It did not suddenly sway him into an appreciation for punk rock. Instead, it made him wish she would pause so he might collect the fifteen dollars she owed.

So he waited at her storm door. Finally she did pause, and he knocked on the door as loud as he could. Melissa swung the door open, ready for a confrontation. When she saw Torty, though, her small dark eyes gaped awake and her thin dash of a mouth bowed in a smile.

“Hey, Henry!” she said. “I thought you were gonna be that old bitch next door, complaining about the noise again. Come in! I probably owe you a ton.”

Torty stepped into the vestibule, disarmed.

Her living room still had no furniture. Just cardboard boxes full of junk, a blanket and pillow on the floor, a metal folding chair, her guitar and amp. She rubbed her hands together. “So, what’s the damage?”

“It’s, um, six weeks. Fifteen dollars.”

“Six weeks, huh?” She stared at Torty, and her smile already vanished. “It had to be six weeks.”

Torty wanted to apologize. For what and why, he didn’t know. He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? The six-week time span seemed to bother her more than the amount she owed. She muttered something like “Hold on” and went to another room. She returned with a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.

“Keep the change,” she said. “You do good work.”

“Thanks,” he said, and needed to deflect the compliment somehow. “You - you’re a really good guitar player.”

“Eh, I’m just messing around. My real love is classical.”

Gazing at her tattoo - a cartoonish girl-cat wearing fatigues and brandishing a machine gun - Torty felt something breaking and falling apart inside, a small but real collapse he could not comprehend.

“Anyway, I’m sorry for taking so long to pay you. I won’t take this long again, I promise,” she said.

As Torty walked back outside, the guitar let out a harsh strum. Then the strum bent, repeated, and stretched itself into ‘Here Comes The Bride.’ Stopping on her front walkway, he listened to this heavy-metal parody of a wedding march. It soon lapsed back into more typical riffs, the usual cacophony.

---

Weeks later, he noticed a van parked in front of Melissa’s house. It was not the moving van, but a white one with ‘Access’ printed on its sides in big blue letters. Torty didn’t think much of this for the first few days. Since everyone parallel-parked on Fernhill, the same vehicles constantly appeared, disappeared, and reappeared along the curb. Sometimes a strange new one would enter the mix briefly and disappear forever.

Then came the day when Torty actually saw a man park the van. He was tall but overweight, with straggly hair and a beard. He slammed the van door shut and started for Melissa’s house. Then, noticing Torty approaching, the man stopped and looked at him.

“We owe you anything?” the man said.

Between the man’s tone and direct stare, Torty already didn’t like him. “You mean this house?”

“Yeah. This house. My wife’s got a way of running up costs. Since we’ve been getting a paper every day, I figured we owed you money.”

“Your wife?”

The man nodded condescendingly. “Yeah. Melissa Hennessey. We owe you anything or not, bud?”

Torty consulted his receipt book clamped to the canvas sack, finding the card labeled ‘616 Fernhill - Melissa.’ Nothing about anybody named Hennessey, a name which annoyed him. “Yeah. She owes for two weeks.”

So this Hennessey person dug a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to Torty. “There you go. And, hey, bud, you can stop delivering here. No hard feelings, but we just gotta cut some expenses. Okay?”

He gruffly slapped Torty on the shoulder and walked to Melissa’s front porch, even went in her front door.

---

From then on, Torty had to skip 616. That didn’t mean that he stopped staring at its windows when he passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of Melissa. Nor did it mean that he stopped hearing her voice. Though when he did, she was always having another hoarse shouting match with her husband. Another door-slamming, glass-breaking argument. If he heard this much just passing through every day, Torty wondered what their poor neighbors must have to endure.

He hadn’t seen Melissa since her husband canceled the paper, nor had he heard the guitar. Some kind of frustration was churning in him, an anxiety that seemed to intensify every time he passed 616.
One night, Torty came home from the paper route, went straight to his bedroom, and started to do sit-ups.

Dad eventually appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

Torty reclined and sprawled on the floor, sweaty and winded. “Nothing,” he said.

“For doing nothing, you’re sure creaking the floorboards a lot. And grunting a lot. Anyway, dinner’s ready.”

Torty wiped his forearm over his moist brow. “Hey, Dad,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I got these married people on my route. And they’re always fighting, screaming at each other. I met the guy once. His name is something Hennessey. He seems like a real jerk.”

“Okay,” Dad said. “Did I mention that dinner’s ready?”

“And, well, I’m wondering if maybe he’s beating her. They get pretty loud. I mean, shouldn’t somebody do something if he is?”

Dad took a breath. Patience and handling tough questions were never his strengths. “I guess. If you know for sure that’s what’s - hey, wait a second. Did you say his name was ‘Hennessey’?”

“Yeah. Why? Do you know him?”

“A big burly guy?”

“Yeah. He has a beard, kind of long hair. Drives one of those handicapped vans.”

“Oh, it figures,” Dad said. “That’s probably just Robin Hennessey.”

Robin! Whatever that guy looked like, it definitely wasn’t a Robin, Torty thought. “His wife was a customer for a little while. Her name was Melissa.”

“Yeah. That’s who it is, then,” Dad said. “In that case, I wouldn’t sweat it. Come on, let’s eat.”

Torty followed Dad downstairs. “You know them? I thought they just moved here.”

“I knew who her old man was. You wouldn’t remember him. He was a big-shot conductor in the symphony downtown, lived right here in Shelton. His girl was supposed to be some musical prodigy, one of those weird kid geniuses. But she threw it all away to marry that Hennessey bum. Her old man disinherited her and everything. He’s been dead for about, oh, a dozen years now, I guess.”

Torty did not question Dad’s information. A lifelong Sheltonite, Dad knew something about everyone in the neighborhood. Whenever Torty and his father went anywhere in Shelton, Dad always seemed to run into an old friend or acquaintance, always ended up gossiping while the bored Torty fidgeted.

“Come on, you two, sit down already,” Torty’s mother said as they approached the table, as she served up hot dogs and french fries. “And somebody say grace.”

---

Months later, there was a For Sale sign posted in Melissa’s lawn. Another month, and For Sale became Sold. No more Access van, no more shouting.

Torty’s other customers did not miss the Hennesseys. Mrs. Zucco at 614, the ‘old bitch’ whom Melissa mentioned, had often rolled her eyes and whispered insults toward 616 whenever Torty collected. Once the house was sold, a giddy Mrs. Zucco said it was about time those two crawled back to whatever dump they crawled out of. Now, she hoped, she’d finally have the classy kind of neighbors she’d always deserved.

2.

Torty had just begun his junior year of high school. He’d turned sixteen and was learning to drive. He was also considering another job. The paper route’s routine had only become duller, and its profits less adequate.

The years of regular exercise had helped him to lose weight. As he progressed through high school, he also grew a few inches and updated his wardrobe to the baggy jeans and sports jerseys that were in style at the time. No matter how much his appearance and stamina changed, people continued to call him ‘Torty.’ Some habits must be damn near impossible for some people to break, he decided.

So Torty was delivering newspapers on Fernhill, plodding up yet another stairway to another front porch when someone said, “Got a second, bud?” behind him.

He turned to see a man standing across the street, at a house that wasn’t on his route. Torty delivered the paper and then approached him. Only as he stood within a few feet of the overweight and bearded man did Torty recognize him as Robin Hennessey. Hennessey wore a brown polyester uniform with a plastic badge.

“Hey, I was just moving in here and was wondering if you could start delivering the paper.”

Torty stared at Hennessey. Slowly he realized that Hennessey neither remembered nor recognized him. All Torty could say was, “Um, are you sure?”

Hennessey gave a bewildered smile. “Yeah. You can do that, right?”

“Well, yeah, Mr. -” he stopped himself and left it at “Mister.”

“Cool! Yeah, start it up whenever you get the chance. The only thing is, I’m working security down at the Civic Arena, so I work a lot of nights. If you can’t get ahold of me, I’ll leave your money in an envelope in the door. Take it easy.” Hennessey playfully slapped Torty on the shoulder and walked back inside.

“Thanks,” Torty muttered. He now noticed the For Sale sign posted in the house’s front lawn, and the Sold sticker covering the realtor’s phone number. When he resumed delivering his papers, Torty found himself stunned into a slower pace than usual.

---

He couldn’t sleep that night. The more he tried to understand what kept him awake, the more restless he became. It had been a long time since he’d last thought of Melissa, and now he could think of nothing else. All this trouble for a girl who wasn’t even pretty, he told himself in a brusque attempt to drop the matter and fall asleep. It didn’t work.

The next morning over the breakfast table, Torty told his father, “Hey, Dad, you’ll never guess who I saw on my route yesterday. That Robin Hennessey guy. He’s moved back to Fernhill again. And now he wants the paper again. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Dad said, not even glancing up from his hashbrowns. “Sounds typical, in fact.”

“But another house on the same street?”

“They do nothing but bounce around. And they never get too far from Shelton, either.”

“Are you sure they’re still together? All they did was fight, and I only saw him yesterday. Not her.”

“Give it time,” Dad said. He lifted his steaming coffee to his lips, slurped it, put the cup down.

Mom walked into the dining room with a steaming pot in hand. “Last call.”

Dad pointed at his mug, still not lifting his eyes from his plate.

---

As a customer, Hennessey turned out to be just as lousy as Melissa. Torty never saw him again after the day he requested service, and the envelopes he promised never appeared between his storm door and regular door. Weeks passed and Hennessey’s debt accumulated.

With each day of delivering to 919 Fernhill, Torty considered canceling the service on his own, citing the lack of payment. It was an option all paper boys possessed, but one they seldom used in hopes of eventually cornering the negligent customer and landing that big payoff. Torty had no such hope regarding Hennessey. As friendly as the man seemed when they last met, Torty still couldn’t forget the irritable, shouting Hennessey of two years ago.

He’d even stopped delivery for a few days when he heard a familiar sound from the basement of 919. It was the chugging rumble of an electric guitar, punctuated with the occasional screech or wail. The sound grew louder as he neared the house. His limbs and muscles tensed. His heartbeat outpaced the electric riff.

He jogged down the narrow, cracked steps that wound around the side of the house, down past the windows rattling from her sonic barrage, down to her basement door. Having no idea what he’d say to her and not caring, he waited for a pause in the noise. When it came, he knocked on the basement door as loud as he could.

The door opened as soon as his fist touched it. Torty looked down at the jamb and saw that a chunk of it was missing, as if the door had already been forced.

“Back off!” Melissa shouted. She ran to the doorway, wielding her guitar by the neck like a club.
Torty stood there, frozen.

She stopped, looked him over, then saw the canvas sack full of newspapers at his feet. It took a few blinks, but a glint of recognition appeared in her small dark eyes.

“Wait, I know you,” she said. “Henry? That is your name, right?”

He nodded.

Slowly, then, she smiled and lowered the guitar. “Shit, do you look different! You look good, though! Wow! Come in.”

It was a cramped, dingy space. Wooden steps with flaking paint, two cast-iron stationary tubs next to a washer and dryer, her amp and guitar, all enclosed in pale yellow walls.

“I’d offer you a drink or something, but I, um, can’t get upstairs. I kind of accidentally locked myself down here,” she said.

“Oh. Um, yeah. Sure,” Torty said. It occurred to him that she wasn’t supposed to be in this house, that she’d broken in through the door.

“And he owes you money, too, I bet. I’d pay you, but my money’s kind of locked upstairs, too.”

“Oh, that’s okay. It’s nothing, really. No big deal.”

“I don’t know what he was thinking, getting the paper again. He can never afford it.”

“Well, I can, um, cancel delivery from now on if you want.”

“You’d better,” she said with a sad smile. “I’m sorry, though. I’ll get you your money someday. Just like I’ll do a lot of things someday.”

Torty tried to think of something to say. The best he could do was, “Um, it’s okay.”

Melissa slung her guitar strap back onto her shoulder, sat down on the flaking steps. She also reached over to the amp and turned the volume very low. Then she played a few quiet chords, then a gentle classical piece. Softly over her own music, she said, “No, it’s not okay. It’s anything but okay.” With a glance at Torty, she said, “How old are you, Henry?”

“Sixteen.”

She nodded, continued playing for a moment, then stopped. “Watch out, Henry. Pretty soon you’re gonna meet some beautiful and amazing girls. They don’t even have to be beautiful or amazing to anybody but you. And when you meet the one you really love, the one you’d die for, then you’d better run, Henry. You’d better run really fast and never look back. Because nothing kills dreams faster than love.” She resumed her playing, closing her eyes. “Give it some time, just a little bit of time, and you’ve already crumbled. All it took for me was six weeks.”

Upstairs, a door opened and closed. Footsteps thumped above their heads.

Before Torty could say anything, Melissa reached over and turned up the volume. She raked her hand across the strings, unleashing a roar through the amp.

The footsteps hurried around. The door at the top of the steps slammed open.

“Jesus Christ!” Hennessey cried. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

“What the fuck is it to you?!” Melissa shouted back. Then she gunned a rapid power-chord riff.

“What part of ‘restraining order’ don’t you understand?” Hennessey shouted once she paused. “Get out before I call the cops!”

He slammed the door shut. Melissa dropped her guitar and ran up the stairs, saying, “I’ll show you ‘restraining order,’ you son of a bitch!”

Torty slipped outside when Melissa began pounding on the door with her fists and boots. He grabbed his canvas bag, hoisted it up on his shoulder, and ran back up onto Fernhill. For the rest of that day, and all the days he worked his paper route, he delivered with a nervous speed. He’d never know what happened during those six weeks when Melissa first met Robin. But Torty liked to believe it was the most wonderful stellar phenomenon in the universe, for the sake of the Hennesseys, their neighbors, and everyone everywhere who’d ever fallen in love.

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Michael Ayoob grew up in Pittsburgh, where he graduated from Carnegie-Mellon
University. He is currently pursuing his M.F.A. in creative writing at Columbia University and working on a novel called 'Shots On Goal.'  He can be contacted at [email protected].

©2003 Me Three