by Jon Cohen
“Hallelujah, my fortunes had turned! I danced a jig right there in the bathroom, I hugged my dog who I had treated wretchedly only an hour before, I made plans to bust up every gin and vodka bottle that I had hidden in shoe boxes and closets in every room of my house. Louis, if I had been struck deaf and blind at that very moment, at the height of my elation, I would still be a happy man—and you would not be wearing the scarf and hat you do today.”
Louis tried to stand. “Mr. Mastuzek…”
“Wait.” Harvey held up his hand. “Because had I been deaf and blind, I would never have heard the sound that was to me catastrophe, seen the sight that dashed my faith and hope. The faucet, you see, began to drip again. It was not fixed, could not be fixed no matter how I tried. And I did try, again and again, hour after hour. No solutions, no remedies, no answers. ‘That which breaks remains broken’—those are the words that should have been painted under MALONE’S HARDWARE. Or maybe, MALONE’S HARDWARE—WE SELL ILLUSIONS.”
Louis said, “But you should have come back, Mr. Mastuzek. I sold you the wrong size washer by mistake, that’s all.”
“It was the perfect washer.” He fingered the washer that lay on the stretcher beside Louis’s leg. “You sold me the right washer, but even that wasn’t enough.”
“Then you needed a new valve stem, or something else.”
“You expected me to come back?” said Harvey, fingering the washer and not looking at Louis. “You expected me to come back and go through it all over again? To buy the perfect valve stem, or whatever other perfect part you had there on the shelves of your store?”
“Sometimes it takes a while before—”
Harvey snatched the washer off the stretcher. “A while! I didn’t have a while. A while didn’t have anything to do with it. I never had a prayer. That washer, the idea of the washer, would’ve worked for anyone else but me. I watched that faucet drip for a day and a night so that my soul would be filled to overflowing with the black truth, the certain knowledge that sometimes a thing that breaks is supposed to remain broken. Ruination is my natural state. I’ve come to accept it, but they can’t accept that here”—Harvey gestured at the walls of the examination room—“this hospital is as bad as your father’s store. They find me and bring me here, and I bleed all over them, and they patch me up for a while, but before too long, I feel the drip beginning inside me all over again, the burning drip, the unrelenting drip, the unstoppable drip of my life’s blood, which will continue unabated until I’m dry and dead.
“But”—and now Harvey’s voice dropped low—“just because ruination was to be my fate did not mean it had to be yours, and that’s why I’ve come to you, Louis, to confess, and to ask for your forgiveness. You see, I blamed your father’s store for the brief light that made darker the blackness that surrounded me. The bitter taste of hope. Enraged and drunk, I lit the match and started the fire that burned you. It was me.” Harvey could hardly speak now, and he grasped Louis’s leg. “I didn’t know you were there, though, boy. I had no idea. I tried to burn down the store, but instead I burned you.” Harvey’s agitation had opened the old diseased wound in his stomach again, and the first of the flow of blood had reached the corner of his mouth.
Louis said, “You’re bleeding.”
“I’ve been bleeding for sixteen years, boy.”
“Mr. Mastuzek, please. It wasn’t you.”
“Forgive me.” Harvey touched his tongue to the corner of his mouth where the blood welled up, and the spot was clean for a moment, then a new drop appeared almost immediately.
“It was an accident,” said Louis. “A frayed cord touched some oily rags. I tried to put it out. A spark.…” Louis closed his eyes, his voice a whisper. “A spark rose.”
“No, I was drunk, drunk in the alley behind the store and I lit a match, Louis, forgive me, I lit a match…” Harvey dragged his arm across his red mouth.
“And the spark rose, like, like a firefly,” said Louis. “Then it fell, into a jar of paint thinner, clearer than water, and when it flashed, I thought I’d been splashed with ice water, it was so cold on my face.”
“And Louis, I pushed open the door to the back of the store, tossed the match into the darkness, and ran. I never saw you. I just ran and ran.”
“After the cold, there was heat. And flames. Everywhere flames. Heat,” said Louis, opening his eyes and looking at Harvey, “and flames.” He looked through the flames at Harvey, at the blood running now, dripping from Harvey’s stubbled chin and onto his hospital gown. He looked at Harvey and understood that Harvey’s version of the fire at Malone’s Hardware was true. And he understood, too, that his own version was true. Who knew how many true versions there were? How many people sat quietly in their houses, bleeding? How many linked their calamities and pains to his own?
Louis reached out with the end of his purple scarf and wiped the blood from Harvey’s chin. “Mr. Mastuzek,” he said softly.
Whether it was Louis’s kind act or the natural ebb and flow of Harvey’s seeping wound, the blood did not rise again where Louis had cleaned it away. Harvey stared at Louis for a long moment, then nodded once and turned for the door. He opened it a crack, peered out, then pulled it all the way. He waved once to Louis, and took off down the hallway like a man who wasn’t coming back.
Less than a minute later Dr. Gunther walked into the room, followed by Iris. Iris held two pain pills out to Louis, which he took, brushing her fingers with his own. Both were trembling slightly and the exchange was not easy. Iris helped him hold the cup of water steady as he swallowed the pills. She stepped behind Dr. Gunther, who looked up from Louis’s ER chart.
“Hello Louis,” he said, looking at Louis’s arm as he spoke, as if it were the injury that went by the name of Louis. “I’m Dr. Gunther. Looks like a good break, probably your radius with a little ulnar involvement. X-ray’ll tell, then we’ll put you in a cast, and you’ll be on your way.” Dr. Gunther’s eyes moved up to Louis’s face. “I took a look at your old records. You were here before, sixteen years ago, was it? You were burned in an accident.”
Iris’s head peeked out around Dr. Gunther’s back. “Let me ask you,” Dr. Gunther said. “You underwent a lot of reconstruction. How did it work out?”
Louis looked at him.
“You know, reconstruction. They fixed you up.”
Louis looked down at the linoleum. Beside Dr. Gunther’s right foot lay Harvey Mastuzek’s black washer. “Fixed,” Louis repeated softly.
“Mind if I have a look?” Whether Louis minded or not, Dr. Gunther reached for Louis’s scarf, as if it were the right of his profession to have unlimited access to wounds, new or old. At that moment, Iris fell against Dr. Gunther from behind and emptied the remaining cup of pill water down the back of his pants.
He yelped, startled by the cold water and Iris clutching at his legs and backside.
“Oh Dr. Gunther, I’m so sorry,” Iris exclaimed. “I—I lost my balance.”
“I’m drenched! How could you lose your balance just standing there?” He slapped at the back of his pants.
“I think my blood sugar’s low or something. I kind of just tipped over.”
Dr. Gunther made a disgusted sound, and started out the door. “Excuse me, Louis. Iris will take you to X-ray now—if she’s steady enough for the trip, that is—and I’ll see you again in the cast room.” He glared at Iris and went out the door.
When Iris turned to Louis, she saw his shoulders shaking. Then she heard, rising from behind his scarf, the sound of muffled laughter.
She tried not to smile. “I slipped.”
“Yes,” Louis said.
“It’s none of his business what you got behind there,” she said quickly, gesturing at his scarf. “That’s not what you’re here for.”
“Yes.”
“Doctors think they own you when you come in here.”
“Yes,” said Louis. “I remember when the doctors owned me. The nurses, though, were very good to me.”
“There’s nothing better than a good nurse when you need one.” Iris flushed red when she thought about what she’d said. “I’ll get a wheelchair, and we’ll get you down to X-ray.”
In an hour they had finished with him. Dr. Gunther didn’t mention Louis’s accident again. He hardly spoke at all as he wrapped Louis’s arm and positioned it as the cast hardened; indeed, he paid more attention to Iris’s activities in the cast room than to Louis’s arm, keeping an eye on her in case she decided to fall on him again.
Iris wheeled Louis back down the hall to the waiting area where Gracie sat with Donna Hodges. The others had returned home after much coaxing by Gracie. Getting Francine back in the car had not been easy; Bert and Carl had ended up stuffing her, still squawking, in the backseat.
Iris paused just before turning the corner to the waiting area. She looked down at Louis’s Pirates hat and at the scarf coiled around his neck. It was coming loose, slipping down from Louis’s face. He tried to fix it, but with one arm in a cast he was having a difficult time. Iris reached down from behind and readjusted it for him. Her fingers touched the coarsened skin of his cheeks. She did not flinch.
“Thank you,” said Louis. “I guess it will be a little awkward for a while.”
“Wearing a cast is not as easy as people think.”
Louis said, “I remember when I was small, I longed to have one. I was jealous of other boys who got them—I used to crave their injuries. Crave their injuries… can you imagine?”
Iris stood behind Louis’s wheelchair, gazing down at the back of his head. A loose curl of brown hair poked through his purple scarf. “Mr. Malone,” she said.
Louis turned his head partway around. “No, not Mr. Malone. My father was Mr. Malone. Louis.”
“Yes. Well, Louis,” said Iris, adjusting his scarf again, and just brushing with the tip of her finger that single brown curl, “you said… you said you don’t get out much.”
Louis shifted in the wheelchair.
“And I was thinking,” said Iris, “you know, as your nurse and everything, being your nurse and all, maybe it would be a good idea if I looked in on you. If you want, that is. If it would be a help.” Iris started pushing the wheelchair forward again, toward the glass doors to the waiting room.
Louis could see Gracie give a little wave as she rose from her chair. In the reflection of the doors, he also saw Iris standing behind him and slightly to one side, so short she stood level with him even though he was sitting in the wheelchair. For a moment, in the reflection, they were together, cheek to cheek, and it was a strange and lovely sight for the man in the window who for sixteen years had seen only himself mirrored in the glass, standing alone.
“How soon,” Louis said softly. “How soon before you could come?”
PART FIVE
FLAMES
CHAPTER ONE
NOW WAIT a minute, just where in hell was he? Arnie tugged the leash to stop Duke, the leash he held firmly in his good hand because he’d never, ever make the mistake of wrapping it around his hook again. Arnie tugged, and after passing two or three more houses, Duke, propelled forward by weight, motion, and intensity of purpose, finally came to a reluctant halt. Duke lifted his nose to the warm May night air and sniffed the redolence of an overturned garbage can in a nearby backyard, then let out a disappointed sigh.
Arnie immediately started up again, giving the leash a jerk, and Duke was not amused, this being the third time in two minutes Arnie had stopped and started. Duke stiffened and twisted his head, sending a jerk of his own back up the leash to Arnie. Arnie didn’t really notice. He was squinting into the dark at a brightly lit bay window, hoping to see someone he recognized, because he sure didn’t recognize any of the houses around him. They looked like the houses on his street, but then again, they didn’t. A figure suddenly appeared at the bay window, fiddled with a curtain, and disappeared again. Arnie’s heart thumped against his chest, like a fist banging. Krupmeyer? Jesus, that was the Krupster himself; he wasn’t dead at all, he’d just moved to another part of town. No—Arnie’s heart thumped again—he’d just seen Krupmeyer’s ghost. Krupso come back to haunt him. Arnie looked up and down the street, then, dragging Duke with him, moved in a crouch up the side yard. Here he comes again. Arnie sucked in his breath. Krupster, I didn’t mean to kill you. How in Christ’s name was I supposed to know you had a bad ticker? But it wasn’t Krupmeyer. It was an overweight woman in curlers and a pink housecoat. Arnie dropped to his knees when she came to the window again to peer into the darkness. Probably watching for her husband to come driving home from bowling. That’s just what I need, thought Arnie, to be caught peeping by the husband. Big as she was, the guy was sure to be a whopper. When she moved from the window back to her TV set, Arnie skittered low across the lawn like a crab, Duke in tow. When he was safely on the sidewalk and several houses down the block, Arnie leaned against a tree to catch his breath. Duke looked up at him with a mixture of concern and exasperation. Okay, Arnie, the look said, you’ve got some explaining to do.
“Man oh man,” said Arnie, shaking his head. “Man oh man oh man. I’m going crazy, Duke. I’m going crazy and senile. Krupmeyer—I saw him. I was sure of it. Didn’t that look like Krupmeyer to you?”
Duke sat very still even when the leash slipped from Arnie’s hand, as Arnie rubbed his eyes. It was not the time to leave his master’s side, no matter how sweetly scented with garbage the night air happened to be.
“Well it sure looked like the Krupster to me. I swear, I even saw him holding his snow shovel in his hand.” Arnie scanned the street, dark except for bright pools from the streetlights that stood every five or six houses. Most of the people in these unknown houses had gone to bed, which was where Arnie longed to be. Why hadn’t he just let Duke out in the backyard for his bedtime pee? No, he had to walk him; the strangely warm May air beckoned him, lured him out of his house, and up and down streets until the familiar slid into the unfamiliar. What scared Arnie was that he wasn’t sure whether he was genuinely lost in a part of Waverly he’d never been in, or if he was on a street he’d traveled with Duke every day for the last six years and he just didn’t recognize it because his brain had gone soft. He swallowed and rubbed his scalp—he’d thought of a worse possibility. What if he was in a neighborhood he’d never been in before and his brain had gone soft? Seeing the ghost of Krupmeyer indicated the condition of his brain. And as for where exactly he and Duke were… he hoped at least he was still in Waverly, but thinking about it, he had no idea how long he’d been wandering around.
He knelt down to Duke and pulled the dog close to him. “I’ve lost it, Duke. If I ever get back to Iris she’ll put me in a nursing home for sure. And she’d be right to do it, too.” He held the dog and glanced around at the alien landscape that surrounded him. The houses loomed, the shadows from the maple trees above him were dark and deep. The air was no longer warm, and he trembled. “Where am I?” he whispered into Duke’s fur. Then he said, “LuLu?”
LuLu had been the one to show him the way home, walking or driving, always at his side.
“Jesus,” he’d say, “where are we?”
And LuLu would say, “I told you, Arnie, take a left on Columbia and a right on Morton.”
“I took a right.”
“You took a left,” she’d say, patting his knee.
“On Columbia.”
“On Morton, dear, when you should have turned right.”
“Now what’ll we do?”
When LuLu was beside him, he was never lost. He knew she would put him on the road home once again.
But now, alone on these streets, he was lost, had been since the day she died. “I want to go home,” he whispered into the dark. Which home? He’d moved too many times. LuLu was home, and she was nowhere he could get to on this night. Duke! Arnie pushed back and looked the dog in the eye. Of course. Duke probably knew the way home. Like Lassie. That’s the one thing a dog knew how to do—find his way back.
Arni
e straightened himself and brushed a piece of dog hair off his tongue. “Hey Lassie. Take us home. Come on now, you know the way.”
Duke blinked at him. Lassie?
“You ain’t lost like me, are you boy?” Arnie patted the dog encouragingly. “You been marking the trail, right? Hell, you pissed every thirty yards since we left the house.”
Duke slowly lifted his ass off the sidewalk, then pushed his nose around in the air like a bloodhound; at least that’s the kind of dog Arnie hoped Duke had become, a Lassie/bloodhound hybrid. In fact, Duke had absolutely no comprehension of his master’s hopes and fears. He was not sniffing out the trail for home, which he could have done with ease since the bushes he’d soaked were the scent equivalent of blazing flares; rather, he concentrated on the other suburban night smells that tempted a dog—the lurking cats, the opossums and raccoons that rousted themselves from beneath back porches, the half-closed trash bags that released their perfumes. Why in God’s name would Duke head for home with this circus of fragrances swirling before his nose? Duke set out in a determined trot and Arnie hurried along behind him, at first with confidence, then, after several blocks, with growing suspicion, and finally despair when Duke suddenly reared up on his hind legs like a pony and bolted forward into a darkened yard, leaving his open collar dangling on the end of the leash that Arnie clutched in his throbbing hand.
“Shhhiiit, Duke,” Arnie cried out, then caught himself and hid in some rhododendrons. He didn’t need somebody calling the cops on him. “Duke,” he whispered hoarsely, “get back here.” But Duke was gone, his happy barks sounding faintly from some distant street.
Arnie felt the tears rise. He had not cried since LuLu left him. He was lost and abandoned, doomed to wander the streets in the changing seasons, known to no one. He might make it until winter, living out of trash cans, and then one night he’d freeze to death, the ice forming first on the tip of his hook. Dead in winter like poor old Krupso. Arnie began to wander, keeping mostly to the sidewalk, but sometimes veering across front yards, sometimes into the street. He looked into the windows of the houses as he passed, but he saw few lights on now. And what would I do, knock on the door and say, Hi, I’m Arnie, I can’t remember where I live, can’t remember my phone number or my last name, won’t you please take me in? I won’t be any trouble. I hardly eat a thing—hell, at my age I hardly breathe.