“She was like that,” a voice said when Chase asked where her clothes were. They didn’t know. That’s when he saw Michele’s T-shirt on the bed. That’s when Chase realized that at one point they were going to dress Carly but decided the sheet would be easier. Bailey said that when people overdose they get so hot that they’ll strip off their clothes to try to cool down. Bailey was explaining this as Chase slid his hands carefully under Carly’s thighs and lower back and started to lift her. Bailey stood to help. Michele tried to keep the sheet over her while Chase and Bailey clutched Carly’s arms and legs but the sheet just draped over her torso and slid below her breasts and eventually, halfway down the stairs, fell off completely.
“Where are we going?” Bailey asked, walking backward down the carpeted stairs of his parents’ house, his hands wrapped around Carly’s ankles.
“Call an ambulance,” Chase said to Michele, who followed, the sheet in hand, still wearing only her jeans and a bra.
“Why?” Bailey asked, his eyes bloodshot from the drugs.
Chase didn’t respond. They stood in the entryway to the house. Chase caught their reflection in a sweeping gold-framed mirror on a wall. Chase had been only partially convinced that this was really happening but the mirror told another truth. He was cycling through bursts of incomplete thoughts that took no real shape.
She’ll breathe. We’ll pound her chest. A closed fist to jump-start. But we have to cover her face. We can’t touch her. Mom.
His ears were ringing and the tightness in his head made his skull feel like it was in a vise. He cleared his throat, he found his voice.
Michele walked past them to the kitchen and called for an ambulance.
“Outside,” Chase said.
Bailey agreed because he was worried that his parents would be “culpable” if Carly were found inside the house. Michele joined them and was still wearing only her jeans and the bra (it was all she could manage) while she sat next to Carly, the sheet draped over Carly except for her face, on the front lawn outside the house. The grass was thick. The sprinklers had been on throughout the night so the lawn was still cool and wet. The sun was pouring down on everything. They waited for the ambulance. A car drove past and slowed, the driver staring at the scene on the lawn. When Chase stood up the car kept going. And then they heard the sirens in the distance. Michele threw up on the sidewalk. The medics moved quickly even though Chase kept telling them she was dead. They followed procedure. They pressed her neck and held her wrists and lifted her eyelids. They did not attempt CPR. They said “Triple zero.” They moved her body onto a stretcher and lifted her into the back of the ambulance.
No matter how many times Chase told them she was dead they didn’t seem to listen and so he stopped saying it, and when he rode with her to the hospital they seemed relieved that he wasn’t talking anymore. Chase noticed there weren’t sirens and the medics no longer moved with any kind of urgency. No one spoke to Chase or even looked at him. The driver spoke to someone at the hospital and told them again “triple zero” and described Carly’s condition as showing “no cardiac electrical activity” and in early stages of rigor mortis. Chase slid his hand under the sheet and wrapped it around Carly’s head. He felt her hair and it was soft. He spread his fingers like a comb and ran them through it once before they took her body away on a high gurney, its wheels squeaking as they pushed it slowly down a bright hallway.
Chase found himself at a pay phone underneath a television that was bolted to the wall he was leaning against in order to keep from falling. (He had left his cell in the bedroom on Beverly.) He realized it was only eight hours ago that they had sat together in her room. He could have reached out and touched her shoulder and told her to stay home with him and watch a movie instead of going to the party. But she never listened to him when he said stuff like that. And then Carly was sitting on Chase’s bed and they were children and it was Christmas morning before anyone was awake and their father was back living at home after moving to California for the summer because he and their mother were going to try to make things work. Carly said it felt weird having him back in the house and in a hopeful tone asked Chase if he thought their father would stay. Chase lied to her that Christmas morning and said of course he thought their father would stay. He knew Carly saw through the lie. This happened after they opened presents, when their father took pictures of the three of them outside in the backyard and never once joined them in a single photograph. He left on New Year’s Eve. Alone in the emergency room Chase suddenly felt so cold he was afraid he might freeze.
He opened his eyes and stared at a vending machine and watched as a woman put money into it, causing a bag of Doritos to detach itself from a hook. The woman reached down and grabbed the Doritos from the vending machine’s black mouth. Chase picked up the plastic receiver of the pay phone. It felt greasy. He slid two dimes in and pressed the buttons, getting them wrong once, hanging up, fishing the dimes out, and trying again. The phone rang on the other end of the line as the woman opened the bag of Doritos and returned to her seat and stared at the television above Chase’s head. On the other end of the line the phone stopped ringing and Chase heard his mother’s voice and then he told her where he was.
13
“So where’s my shit?” Michele asks tiredly when she calls later that night.
“I thought you were going to Cabo.”
“No.”
“I’ve got your stuff.”
“And your point is?” Michele asks.
Chase tells her to meet him at the Public Storage on East Charleston at eleven, after his show. Michele agrees. When she doesn’t offer to come to the show at Devon’s gallery Chase considers inviting her. He suddenly realizes how badly he wants someone there with him.
“You should come to the show tonight.”
There’s a pause that Chase can’t deal with.
“Julia left,” he says. “Why don’t you come with me tonight?”
“Julia left? I don’t get it. Aren’t you supposed to follow her to California?”
“Come with me tonight and we can talk.”
“I’m sorry she left.”
“You shouldn’t be,” he says. “Or maybe you should be. I don’t know.”
“Oh Chase, what did you do?”
“Can I pick you up?”
“I can’t,” she says.
“For like an hour, Michele. You can spare an hour.”
“You sound so sad.”
“I’m not sad.” “She’s better off in the long run anyway.”
“Why do you say that? What about me? Am I better off?”
“There’s a different answer to that question.”
“Come with me tonight.”
“That was a really stupid thing you did. All of my shit? What were you thinking?”
“Just come to the show and we’ll talk about it.”
“Bailey was very impressed, by the way. He’s drunk. Don’t worry though. He knows I didn’t know you would pull something like that.”
“He cares, Michele?” Chase asks. “Does he really care?”
“Cares?” Michele thinks about this word. “Well, he’s totally predictable with his little choke holds and pulling my hair.” She pauses. “People who don’t care walk away.”
“He had to know this was coming,” Chase says. “He had to know that I was going to try to do something for you.”
“That was for me?” she asks. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Connect the fucking dots for me, Charles. Julia’s gone and you have all of my stuff and you’re on the phone with me now and somehow you don’t have the answer.”
“What’s the question?”
“Bailey is still in the house.”
“Do you need me to come over?”
She hangs up.
Chase walks alone into a red-lit room in a white stucco store-front gallery on a bland stretch of Wyoming Avenue. There are only about fifty people but the room is small so it feels
crowded. He regrets that he didn’t devote more time to this show. The work looks old: his mother’s ranch house and the yellow lawn on Beverly Way, Michele nude with knees held to her chest, all legs and arms and black hair, and Carly. The canvases hang in the far corner of the room, ignored. The Beastie Boys are playing and a tan girl in overalls and a baseball cap carries around a tray with little plastic cups of white wine. Chase guzzles a couple of them. He calls Michele three times and gets voice mail. The gallery is too warm and the ceiling is too low. Chase makes his way to the corner where his canvases hang, clutching his third glass of wine. His bio is handwritten on a blue index card next to the painting of Carly: Vegas Native, Teacher, Attended NYU and UNLV. Gained notoriety as a high school junior when he was featured in the Review-Journal and LV Weekly for multicultural murals he painted on the city’s west side. This is his first show.
Chase stares at one of the other featured artists: a thin, plain-looking blonde girl wearing a black T-shirt and cargo pants. Her face is flushed and her cheeks look strained from smiling. Her work is a collage of colored broken glass dangling from filament wire. Chase notices that the shards of glass hang only a few feet from his section of the wall and no one wants to deal with making their way through it to get to his work, but the warmth from the fourth cup of wine courses through him and it’s all momentarily okay. He locates the two other artists: a black dude with Elvis Costello glasses and an Asian girl with pigtails and multiple facial piercings handing out pink postcards for her next show. Chase resents them both. He stands alone with his hands shoved deep in his worn olive cargo pants, feeling sorry for himself, getting drunk, wondering just how long he’ll stay, why he even bothered to come at all, why he’s still here now. He calls Julia. He closes his eyes and ends the call before it goes through. When he opens his eyes another tray of little plastic cups passes by. He manages to lift one from the tray before it disappears. He downs it and feels sick. He stares into the colored broken-glass collage and becomes dizzy. When the nausea passes Chase is still standing there, alone. He had known this night was coming and he had known what he wanted it to be: four or five new works anchoring the wall, Julia here for the weekend in a suite at the Hard Rock, his mother and maybe even Edward at the show with Michele and Hunter and even Anthony and Isabel from his Centennial class, who would have their parents with them, and the night would be his, and he’d spend most of it fending off compliments and thanking everyone for everything and confirming his plans: to leave Las Vegas and continue painting in San Francisco. But none of that matters when his cell vibrates and he sees that it’s Michele. She won’t answer Chase’s questions about where she is and what happened with Bailey. Suddenly it’s eleven and Michele demands that he meet her. But Devon is motioning to Chase, raising a bottle of Red Stripe in his direction. Devon wears black jeans and white Chuck Taylors with no laces and a paint-splattered denim shirt.
He’s tan and has spiky bleached-blond hair. Chase considers pretending he didn’t see Devon and turning away and moving out into the hot dry night unnoticed. But it’s pointless. Devon apologizes to Chase for the arrangement. “If you’d gotten it here sooner we could have done something about that.”
Michele wears no makeup. There is a red handprint on her neck (this is the outline of Bailey’s fingers). There is also a purple welt on her forehead. This can all be seen clearly under the fluorescent light inside the Public Storage building on East Charleston. Chase brushes her neck with the back of his hand. He’s surprised that she lets him.
“I went to Bailey’s house,” Chase says. “Before the show. I drove by. Were you there?”
“Yes,” Michele says. “We were there.”
“His car wasn’t in the driveway. All the lights were off. I knocked and knocked.”
“He insists on curling up in the dark with me after a fight.”
“Where is he now?”
“He’s waiting for you.”
“To do what?”
“Nothing. Don’t do it. Don’t do anything.”
It’s hot inside the warehouse. The elevator carries them to the third floor. The sound of huge fan blades grinding against metal becomes louder when the doors open. They get off and make their way down the narrow hallway. At the end of the hallway the sound is unbearable. Michele covers her ears with her hands. They don’t bother trying to talk over it. Locker number 3114 is secured with the same heavy combination lock it had last time Chase was here. Once inside, Chase pulls the door closed behind them. Michele is on her knees. She’s digging through a pile of clothes. She finds the red canvas bag. She counts the money. It’s all there.
“Eighty-one,” she says, looking up at Chase.
“Take it,” he says. “Take it all. All of your shit’s downstairs. It’s all boxed up. Take everything. Take it now.”
She just stares. “What are you doing?”
“You’re leaving. Take the money. I’ve got all your shit in a locker downstairs. Just take it and leave. Go to Sedona. Go to Santa Fe. Go anywhere.”
Michele tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She stares blankly at the money.
“I can’t believe I thought I was going to buy a house,” she murmurs.
“Just start over,” Chase says. “Do this for me. I’ll take you.”
Michele tells him to shut up.
When Chase asks her why, she says, “Because I’m thinking.”
This is what Chase did when Carly died: zipped up the back of his mother’s black dress and drove the two of them in her Subaru—because she could barely grip the steering wheel—to the funeral at Green Valley Presbyterian where Chase held his mother’s dry, cracked hand the entire time. After the service Chase found his father sitting alone in a rented black Mercedes, sobbing uncontrollably. Later, Michele and Chase drove out to the hills in Green Valley that overlooked the city and got drunk while sitting on the hood of Carly’s Mustang. Chase asked Michele to sleep with him that night and she did. And the next day Chase checked in to Bally’s with the money his father gave him before he went back to Malibu. Chase stayed in the hotel room at Bally’s for two weeks, most of which he spent drinking because at the time that’s all Chase wanted to do.
Michele calls and hangs up. It’s eight in the morning. When they left the Public Storage on East Charleston with all of Michele’s things, Chase drove Michele to her cousin’s house in North Vegas. They both decided she would be safer there instead of at Chase’s apartment or in a hotel room somewhere along the Strip. When Chase calls Michele’s cell and asks, “Where are you? Why haven’t you left?” Michele answers, her voice dragging, “I don’t know. I don’t know why I haven’t left.”
There’s a long pause during which Chase can hear her breathing into the phone.
She says she needs to see him. Her voice is so soft that when he asks her when, he can’t even hear her response.
“Where in the fuck are you, Michele?”
“I’m at my cousin’s . . .” Michele stops. “I put everything back, Chase.”
“What do you mean? No. Michele, no. Please tell me you didn’t.”
“I put it all back.”
“But don’t you realize what’s going to happen?” Chase cries out.
Bailey sits in Rumjungle in a dark booth eating oysters and sipping a Corona. Occasionally he glances at his BlackBerry. His thick, tan arms are lined with scratch marks. He’s sitting across from Chase and Michele. This is how Bailey wants it: Chase and Michele next to each other and opposite him. It somehow confirms something for Bailey. “I was watching your movie again tonight, before coming over here, and I realized that there’s something not working with it,” Bailey says to Michele. “I don’t know if it’s the way it’s cut or the way I shot it, but there’s something that’s off. Maybe I’m not director material.”
Michele shrugs. “Maybe you should have gone to film school.”
“Then again it may have been the subject matter.”
Bailey slides a black leather carryall across the tab
le toward Michele. He swallows another oyster and then gazes at Chase.
Michele looks inside the carryall and then back at Bailey, confused.
“What’s the problem?” Bailey asks innocently.
“What is this?” Michele asks back. “This is like—Are you fucking kidding?”
“It’s your share.”
“My share of what?”
“Your share of everything.” Bailey makes a sweeping, all-encompassing gesture with one arm.
“There was two hundred in the accounts.”
Bailey shakes his head. “There was two-twelve.”
She looks down at the money in the carryall, then back at Bailey.
“We’ve reached a point where this little cunt is holding twenty-five thousand in cash and it’s still not enough.” Bailey sighs. “You basically have to take this. This is all I’m offering you.”
“You’re shit, Bailey,” Michele whispers.
“Was it his idea?” Bailey asks, motioning to Chase.
Michele is shaking her head. “What idea?”
“Was it Chase’s idea to try and fuck me?”
“No one’s trying to fuck you, Bailey.”
“So it wasn’t Chase’s idea?” Bailey asks. “I was so sure of it.”
“It was no one’s idea,” Michele says. “It’s just something that happened.”
“How much did you take?” Bailey asks. “I just want to know. You can keep what you made. It’s yours, I guess. But I do want to know how much you made using my suite, and my girls, and my idea.”
Michele reaches for Bailey’s hand and for a moment he lets her take it. Then he pulls the hand back.
“You’ve had a thousand cocks in you and I’ve felt every one of them.” Bailey says this so tonelessly he could have said anything. “Including his.” He points at Chase. “A thousand cocks,” he says, shaking his head in disgust. “You’re all used up. And since Chase has already done me the favor of moving your shit out of my house, I don’t see what else there is to discuss.” And then he turns to Chase. “And what is playing out no longer involves you.”
The Delivery Man Page 20