The Good Neighbor

by William Kowalski

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  “I’m sorry about that, Owen. I’ll take care of this, don’t you worry,” said Francie. “I’ll fix everything. I promise.”

  “How?” asked Flebberman. He looked sick to his stomach. “I’m not sure,” said Francie, biting her lip. “But—I’ll think of

  something. I promise. I’m really sorry.”

  “Well, you—you oughta be,” said Flebberman. “You damn well oughta be!”

  He got into his truck. Owen got in the passenger side and slammed the door, his chin high with righteous indignation. Fleb berman rolled down his window.

  “You goddamn people move in here and right away you think you can do whatever the hell you want!” he shouted. “Who the hell you think you are, anyway? Whyncha go back where you came from!”

  “Mis—Mister Flebberman!” said Francie. “Please, don’t. He’s not—he doesn’t understand—”

  Flebberman and Owen pulled out of the driveway before she could finish, the heavy wheels of the truck spinning in the packed snow, then grabbing and propelling them up the hill. The silence they left behind them was as loud as a waterfall. When they were gone, Francie turned to Michael, who was still smothered in shame, head hanging.

  “I can’t believe you,” said Francie. “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t I ask you not to tell anybody?”

  “I’m sorry, Sissie, I just . . . got carried away, I guess,” said Michael. “I don’t see what the big deal is, anyway. You think he wasn’t going to find it, sooner or later? You think you can hide something like a cemetery? And besides, it’s not my fault he freaked like that. Dude’s crazy, or something. It’s like he almost had an allergic reaction.”

  “But I told you not to tell him, dammit!”

  “Jeez, Francie,” Michael said. “You don’t have to get all mad on me!”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—he just doesn’t understand this place,” Francie said—not sure that she quite understood it herself. Per

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  haps it was that she felt connected already—to the diary, to the hidey-hole, to the cemetery and the people in it. And she knew that Colt would never feel that way. “He thinks this place is going to be like a... I don’t know, a medal around his neck. He wants to bring his business buddies out here and show off. He wanted to put a golf course back there, for heaven’s sake. Colt is not the kind of person who appreciates history.”

  “That Flebberman guy was pretty upset.”

  “He should be upset,” Francie said. “Look at it from his point of view, Michael. And from mine, too. We show up here and in less than twenty-four hours we’re already making enemies. This is not good. I didn’t want to have these kinds of problems. I am not a confrontational person.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll get over it,” said Michael. He yawned and stretched his arms. “Anyway, listen, Sissie, I’m going back to sleep. You got me up way too early.”

  Francie laughed disbelievingly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she said again. “Is that all you can think of? Sleep?”

  “Well, jeez,” he said, “Waddaya want me to do? You woke me up at like five A.M.”

  “I don’t know!” she said. “But do something! Say something in telligent and perceptive! Something that lets me know you’re in there somewhere!”

  “Well, excuse me,” Michael said, hurt. “Maybe you should go back to Indiana so you can hang out with all your smart college friends, then!”

  “That’s not what I mean!” Francie said. “I didn’t . . . ”

  Michael stood, waiting for whatever she was going to say. But she saw that there was no point in saying it; he would just take it, and wait for her to stop being mad at him, and then things would go back to being the same as they always had. You never got any where yelling at Michael. It was better just to let him be himself, and not expect too much.

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  But suddenly Francie decided she had had enough of that. Why should she expect any less of him just because he was her little brother? Maybe it was going off the pills; maybe it was revenge for telling about the cemetery. She would never know what made her cross the driveway to his Volkswagen bus and wrench open the sliding door. But once she did, she passed the point of no re turn. Instantly she was overwhelmed by a pungent odor that made her wrinkle her nose. There, in a neat stack, she saw ten brick-shaped bundles, wrapped in plastic garbage bags and duct tape, each about a foot long and six or eight inches high.

  Michael came up behind her. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Looking. To see if you were serious.”

  “Well, I was,” he said.

  “You don’t even try to hide it?”

  “What’s the point? If a cop pulled me over, he’d smell it before he even left his car. He wouldn’t even need to call for the dogs.”

  Francie turned to face her brother.

  “Michael,” Francie said, “I want you to go and get rid of this stuff. Today. Right now.”

  Michael’s eyes widened. “What?” he said, incredulous. “Right this minute? Are you kidding?”

  Francie crossed her arms. “Do I look like I’m kidding?” she asked.

  “Well, Sissie . . . what am I supposed to do with it?”

  “You should just . . . turn it in. Just go to the cops and let them have it. Come clean with them. Tell them everything.”

  “Come clean with the cops? Are you nuts? You know what they’ll do to me?”

  “Whatever it is, it won’t be as bad as you think. Come on, Michael, we have murderers and rapists walking the streets. They just check into jail and check out again. What do you think they’re going to do, send you to the guillotine? You’ll feel better if you get this resolved. Then you won’t have it hanging over your head anymore.”

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  Michael laughed, as if still hoping it was some kind of joke— but another look at Francie told him she was in no mood.

  “Wait. You’re serious,” he said.

  “Yeah, I’m serious,” said Francie, “and another thing. You never should have brought it here to begin with. Think about how self ish that was, Michael. Really think about it, for once in your life. If you got caught here, we would all get in trouble. They’d think we were all dealers. They could confiscate the house and property, and we’d never get it back. Do you realize that?”

  “Well—Sissie,” Michael said, “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

  What was I supposed to do, take it to Mom and Dad’s place?” “Why should you have to take it anywhere? Why should this

  be anyone else’s problem but your own?”

  “Okay, well,” he said. “Think about the guys who own it! Whatever they’re gonna do to me is a lot worse than what the cops would do. I’m tellin’ you, Francie. They have to get it back.”

  “I thought you said they were nice guys.” “Yeah, well, business is business.”

  “Well then, take it back to Denver,” she said. “I mean it. Today, right now. Take it somewhere. Anywhere but here.”

  Michael looked at her woefully.

  “Denver is like three days away,” he said. “Francie, I’m broke. I’m flat busted. I don’t get another check from Dad for a whole month.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t even try it.”

  “Try what?” Michael shrieked. He threw his arms up in the air and began marching back and forth. “I’m not trying anything! Francie, come on! I need a break here!” He stopped suddenly and glared at her, suspicious. “You’re mad I told him about the ceme tery, aren’t you? That’s what this is really about.”

  “Of course it’s not about the cemetery,” she said, though in fact it was—at least a little bit.

  “What, then?”

  Francie sighed. “Michael, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to listen. I mean, really listen. Okay?”

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  “Okay,” Michae
l said. “I’m listening.”

  “Something happened to me yesterday, while I was in the su permarket. Something . . . huge. And things are different with me now. Everything, as a matter of fact. You understand? My entire life. Something shifted, somehow. I don’t quite understand it, but that doesn’t matter. All you have to know is that things are not going to be like they were before. Not anymore.”

  “That must have been some supermarket,” Michael said.

  “No, you idiot,” Francie said, “the supermarket had nothing to do with it. It’s—well, I don’t know what it was. I thought it was a breakdown, but really it was a breakthrough. And there are certain things that just can’t happen anymore. And you having a busload of drugs on my property is one of them. I love this place, Michael. I belong here. So I want you to do this, before you do anything else. And I don’t want you to come back until it’s taken care of.”

  Michael sighed.

  “Can I at least have some breakfast first?” he asked.

  She crossed her arms again, not smiling back. “I’ll loan you a hundred dollars,” she said. “That’s it. Add it to the thousands I’ve given you over the years. And I expect you to pay me back for all of it. Eventually.”

  Michael threw his arms up in the air again.

  “Oh, my God! Fucking shit!” he screamed at the sky. “What the fuck is going on all of a sudden? It’s like . . . a nightmare, or some thing!”

  “Michael! You don’t have to talk like that!”

  “Tell me why, Francie. Why? Why does everything have to be different all of a sudden, just like that? What did I do? Huh? Tell me that! What did I do that was so wrong?”

  “Everything has to change, eventually,” she said. “You have to take responsibility, Michael. This is your mess.”

  “IT’S SNOWY!” Michael yelled at her. “THERE’S A HOLE IN MY FLOOR! I’LL DIE!”

  “No, you won’t,” she said.

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  “I might!”

  “Michael,” Francie said, “it’s time for you to grow up.”

  He stared at her, a small noise of disbelief escaping from the back of his throat.

  “Fine,” he said. “Be a fucking bitch about it, then.” “I’ll pretend you didn’t just say that,” said Francie.

  She went into the house and took five twenties from her purse. When she came out again, Michael was scraping ice off the side windows of his bus. Francie watched, saying nothing. When he was done, he pushed past her, went into the house, and came out again, dragging his air mattress after him. She held the money out and he grabbed it from her without a word as he went by, like a re lay racer. He opened the sliding side door of the bus and threw the mattress in. Then he got in the driver’s side and started up the en gine. It took several moments for it to catch, and he held her gaze all that time, eyebrows lowered. Finally he unrolled his window.

  “I’m leaving. Okay? You happy now?” he said.

  “I’m a long way from happy,” said Francie. “But I’m getting there.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” “Michael,” said Francie, “good-bye.” Michael’s lower lip began to quiver.

  “You remember when we were kids?” he said. “And you used to tell me that we would get a house in the country someday, where we could be alone and no one would bother us?”

  “Michael—”

  “First you leave me to fend for myself,” he said, “and now you throw me out? This was supposed to be our place, and now you’re sharing it with him? Great! Thanks a lot, Francie.”

  “Mikey, that was years ago,” she said.

  But, having planted his dagger, Michael was content to leave. He backed out of the driveway and onto the road, where he did a K-turn and began moving slowly along the river. She could see him looking back at her, waiting for some sign that she was just

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  kidding, that she had taken pity on him again. But she gave no such sign, because she wasn’t kidding. And soon he was out of sight.

  And here I am, alone with my house, she thought.

  Francie climbed the steps and closed the door after her. She stopped in the foyer and listened. There was nothing to hear, ex cept her own breathing.

  16‌

  Zero-G

  Colt, driving along the New Jersey Turnpike, was hearing his father ’s voice again.

  Whatsa matter? it said. Afraid of a few dead bodies? Afraid they’re gonna come out and get you?

  “Don’t you start,” Colt said.

  Why not? Too grown up to listen to your father?

  “You’re not my father,” said Colt. “You’re a voice in my head.

  Which means . . . guess what? You’re not real.”

  Yeah, but what is real? Isn’t everything just a voice in our head, when you come right down to it? Isn’t the whole world just an illusion we have to keep convincing ourselves of, over and over?

  “Now you’re gonna start handing me that hippie bullshit? I don’t think so.”

  Actually, it’s not”’hippie bullshit.” It’s Berkeley.

  “Fuck you and your philosophers,” Colt said. “Where were you when I had to deal with Mom’s body, anyway? Huh? And where was your philosophy when you were supposed to be raising me?” He turned on the radio and stabbed at the buttons, trying to

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  find a song with screeching guitars. This was the only thing that worked—turning the volume up to such a level that no one else could have tolerated it.

  It was only when he was alone that he started hearing Nova Hart’s voice. The bastard never bothered him when he was with other people. He was like the singing frog in the old cartoon, the one that sang “Hello, My Ragtime Gal” when there was no one around, but didn’t make so much as a peep when you put him in front of an audience.

  The dead are troublesome, Colt thought.

  His father wasn’t actually dead. He merely thought of him that way. It was Colt’s fervent wish, for reasons he chose not to revisit, that he should never see his father again; “dead” was the most convenient way to think of him. In reality, Colt’s father was liv ing some hours upstate, if you could call his current arrangements “living.”That was something not even Francie knew; she thought Nova was dead, too. And it was something that Colt never al lowed himself to think about, which was why he turned the car stereo up as loud as he could bear it.

  But a person didn’t have to be dead to haunt you. That was a disconcerting fact Colt had discovered in recent years. This voice that took over his head sometimes—there was only one way to deal with that, and that was to make as much noise as possible until it went away. And New York was the one blessed place where you could count on never getting a single moment of peace and quiet.

  Colt’s heart sang with relief as he neared Manhattan, its jagged lines jutting upward like the petrified jaw of some extinct beast. He sped faster toward it, a parched man on his way to an oasis. Hurry, he thought. Hurry, before it starts again. Forget about Francie, forget about the house, forget about everything else. Just hurry up and get there.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

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  Anchor Capital, the investment firm for which Colt worked, was located in one of the glass-and-steel monoliths that dominate Sixth Avenue, a suitably loud thoroughfare constantly bustling with people, cabs, sidewalk vendors, construction crews, and tourists; every so often the surface rumbled queasily as a subway tore through its bowels. Colt’s boss, Forszak, who owned 51 per cent of Anchor, rented a portion of the thirtieth floor of one of these magnificent structures, and it was here that his minions toiled endlessly in the Snake Pit, manipulating the fortunes of the world in their own subtle way, through their tentacles of fiber-op tic cable. Forszak himself, the head of the financial octopus, occu pied a hidden corner office, where, via electronic means, he watched and listened to everything that was said and done through everyone’s computers and telephones,
and cackled, and patted his belly—and occasionally ate homeless children for lunch, if rumors were to be believed. Mostly, though, he just counted his money. Colt knew—he had been in Forszak’s office and seen the figures zooming across the screens. There had been digits followed by more glorious zeroes than he’d ever seen before, even in his dreams. It was enough to make him drool. Someday, he, too, would lead these figures in a merry dance, like the Pied Piper and his legion of rats; someday, Colt would be a Forszak.

  He nodded to the receptionist, who greeted him with a respect ful smile and buzzed him through the glass double doors. Colt went straight into the Snake Pit and hung up his coat. When An chor Capital had moved here six years earlier, Forszak had ordered all partitions removed, all desks pushed together, four by four, cre ating a large, open space in which no one could hide from anyone and everything was known; all the traders were thrown in to gether, writhing around in a heaving, chaotic mess. There were no less than thirty-seven men, and two harried and driven women, all shouting and cursing in the peculiar language of finance. It was blissfully loud in the Snake Pit, a veritable Babel. It had the same effect on Colt that the sound of waves had on sea turtles.

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  He made his way to his desk, feeling the uproar smother him motheringly as it closed behind him. Nothing could bother him here, because there simply wasn’t time to think about anything. On Colt’s desk, just like on every other, were three computer monitors and a wireless keyboard. Behind him was a television, tuned at all times to MSNBC. On the wall in front of him was an other television, this one tuned to CNN. Between these five elec tronic oracles, Colt and his comrades were able to keep a handle on everything of note that happened in the world, for there was no telling how anything—an earthquake in Argentina or a war in Africa or a bushfire in California—could affect the entire market. You had to be adept at interpreting how these events would ripple throughout the financial world, and hedge your bets accordingly, if at all possible. It usually wasn’t possible, but that didn’t keep the traders from trying. They were the diviners at the temple gates, reading the day’s events in the spilled entrails of sacrificial ani mals. Nothing that happened was insignificant: a pencil dropped in Singapore, a woman forgetting to buy steamed rice in Delhi, a butterfly falling out of the sky over the Pacific Ocean—all these things were connected, and no matter how small they seemed, they all meant something. And eventually the effects of these things found their way into the stock market. Theoretically, the most adept trader in the world could lie on a hillside watching the clouds go by, and know every single thing that was happening everywhere, at any given moment. That person hadn’t been born yet, of course, but he was out there somewhere, the Reader, the One—He Who Didn’t Even Need to Set Foot in an Office to Make Fortunes with Every Breath He Drew. Or maybe it was a She. There was no way to know. All of the traders in Forszak’s office dreamed of becoming this One, and all of them knew it would never happen to them.