by Rick Wayne
Heads.
Abandoned school.
Close enough to walk.
The lot was rimmed in a brand new fence. Clusters of signs warned that it was private property, that it was dangerous, and that there was an organic food center coming soon courtesy of the retailer and Rex Magnus & Associates Property Development. The companies’ logos sat next to each other, a cartoon frog and a crown. I didn’t see any construction equipment, just open earth and a square, U-shaped brick monstrosity that had once been the Mortimer Jay Elementary School. Built when Roosevelt was president—Teddy, not Franklin. I walked around to the back, hopped the fence, and stepped through urban decay at its finest. Leaf litter chatted with the breeze and danced in circles with the trash. The few lifeless trees left in the lot looked like skeleton hands erupting through the withered earth, which was damp from an earlier drizzle.
Except for a few that had been knocked out, every one of the building’s regularly spaced windows was neatly boarded. A ring of graffiti ran around the base of the building like a colorful collar. I stepped up cracked concrete and through the doorless entry and entered another world. It was quiet. The graffiti was sparse, and I could see why. The floor had collapsed and the only path was a dangerous shimmy around the remaining rim at the sides. I didn’t try the upper level. That seemed like suicide. But the steps to the basement were poured from the same concrete as those up front, and they had held. Still, it was very dark inside. The sun was low in the sky, and if not for the open ceiling, the lower level would have been completely black. I had to be careful. No one knew where I was. One slip and I just might spend my last hours in that place.
I walked over the debris-strewn foundation, around a corner, and into a large open space—what I imagine had been a boiler room. There was a heavy sliding steel door with a shiny new padlock. But that’s not what caught my eye. At the back wall, barely discernible in the dusk light, was some kind of altar. It was small, maybe four feet high, and made of twigs bound into bonelike bunches that crisscrossed and fanned out like a spine and open ribcage. Strips of hairy twine dangled from it like moss. Several held small bones in knots at their ends. There was a big deer skull at the top, complete with full antlers, while on the ground, a single rat carcass, skinned to the muscle, was propped against the lattice, like it was sitting in judgment over all the world. Big sucker, too. Melted wax from the candle on its head had run over its skinless face and torso and hardened in overlapping dribbles. The candle had burned all the way to the animal’s scalp and left a black and crooked wick inside the hardened remnants of the running wax, which poked up like the spires of a crown.
That’s what it looked like. The Rat King. Skinned and evil.
On the one hand, it seemed weird that such a thing even existed. On the other, it somehow seemed right at home in that place. An altar to an unknown god. I wondered what Ollie would’ve made of it. I wished he was there. He was the consummate bureaucrat, but he was a wealth of practical information. He’d know exactly who to call. I sure didn’t.
I was standing there, staring, when I felt a long, cold shiver slip slowly down my spine. And then the same uncanny feeling I’d had in the abandoned apartment. Before the dark hole. When I felt like I was being watched.
I turned around.
I saw a shed by a field. A light on a high pole. My brother. I was with him. We were young.
A door was open.
My phone buzzed and shook me out of the past. I didn’t look at it. Probably the office again. I walked to the sliding steel door with the brand new padlock. I tried the handle a few times. I yanked on the lock, but it was solid. I kicked hard with the sole of my shoe and almost fell over. Nothing. It didn’t even budge.
I looked at the altar. I looked at the lock.
I walked back up the steps and around the edge of the collapsed floor to the front. I couldn’t keep doing the same things and expect a different result. I needed help. But there was no one at the office I could ask. Not even Ollie. Not anymore.
My phone buzzed again, a reminder of my unread message. I sat on the front stoop of the school and took it out. I’d been wrong. It wasn’t the office. It was a text from Amber. She said she hadn’t heard from me and just wanted to know if we were still on.
“Shit.”
Dinner was tonight. That’s why she’d texted me earlier. To engage in conversation. A subtle reminder. I’d told her the other day that I’d get back to her about my schedule and never had.
I looked across the barren lot to the fence line.
I kept seeing a shed. I remembered it. It was behind my Auntie Susan’s house. Bug and I were there. Mom and I were dropping him off. She told me he was going to stay awhile. I didn’t want to go home. A light on a high pole clicked on and broke the dusk.
My phone buzzed again in my hand. Dr. Massey was sending messages like you do when you need to hear back from someone but they’re not responding. She said politely that she knew a great little Italian joint not too far from the DoH.
There was no way I could get back to my hotel, shower, and get out to a restaurant before any hour that normal people eat. I’d be late as it was, even if I went directly there. So I texted her back and said I was so sorry. I’d gotten some bad news that day and had been running around for work all afternoon. I was still in jeans. I hadn’t showered. But if she was cool with it, there was this unusual little bistro in Brooklyn I wanted to try.
Bistro Indigenes was packed with the dinner crowd. Male and female servers scurried about in neat black aprons and matching bandannas. By the time I got there, Amber was already waiting, which embarrassed me a little and I apologized profusely. I repeated how I hadn’t showered and I wasn’t dressed nearly as nice as her. I lifted the strap of my work bag, still slung over my shoulder, in apology. She was in a dress—fancy casual I guess you’d call it—and she was wearing more makeup than I’d seen on her before. She looked really nice. But she seemed uncomfortable. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, quickly adding that she wasn’t sure if I’d made reservations, so she had put our name down. The hostess told her there was no guarantee we’d even get in before closing. The place was hopping.
“Shit.” I’d been so preoccupied, that possibility hadn’t even occurred to me.
“Should we go somewhere else?” she asked. It was pretty clear she wanted to. She kept looking around with a kind of exaggerated curiosity, as if everything were more interesting than it was, the way you might scan a party for your ex while trying not to make it obvious.
Someone touched my shoulder lightly and I turned. It was the chef’s assistant, or whatever she was. Milan. She was all class, just like before, in khaki pants and a white-and-rainbow wrap. She looked like an Eastern European model, something straight out of a magazine. The cut crystal still dangled from the long chain around her neck. It reflected the light in an odd way. Half of it was tiny rainbows. The other half was dim, as if catching an invisible shadow.
“Dr. Alexander,” she said. “How nice to see you again. We’ve been holding your table.”
“My table?”
“I’m so sorry,” she told Amber. “I didn’t realize you were with the doctor’s party.”
The waiting booth in the foyer was full of hungry hipsters who’d been standing forever. They eyed us resentfully.
Dr. Massey turned to me wearing a bemused smile. “Well, well, Dr. Alexander,” she mocked.
Milan spoke to the host, a thickly mustachioed Salvadoran man with pomaded hair who glanced at us and nodded before leading us to a table with a good view of the open kitchen. In the center was a large stone-block hearth. A fire raged. It seemed much bigger than it needed to be. Like someone had trapped a devil inside.
We ordered wine, and when the waiter left, there was another awkward silence.
“So . . .” She leaned over the table. “I have a confession. I’m so embarrassed.”
I swallowed. I scanned her hand for a wedding ring. Just as empty as before. I still wore min
e. I moved it to my lap.
“I don’t even know your first name,” she said, red-faced. “Your real one, I mean.”
I laughed. Three times we’d met, plus a bunch of text conversations between. I guess it never came up.
“Uchewe.” I spelled it for her and explained how white folks down south always wanted to call me “You-Chew.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“My brother tried calling me Che, you know, like the revolutionary, but it never took. He tried calling me lots of names, actually.”
“Why’s that?”
“I guess because I called him Bug and it stuck and he wanted to get me back.”
“Did something happen with him?” she asked. “Sorry.” She covered her mouth again like it was filthy. “Is that okay to ask? It’s just, you mentioned him once before, and both times you looked . . . I dunno. Away, I guess.”
I hadn’t realized. “No, it’s okay. He died. That’s all. When I was young.”
“I’m so sorry. How old were you?”
“Fourteen. It’s actually funny you bring it up. I’ve been thinking about him today. Don’t know if you heard. The boy died.”
“Are you kidding?” Her eyes got big. “The whole city knows. It’s all over the news. They’ve been flashing those dimples at every commercial break. ‘Unknown killer claims the life of a seven-year-old boy. Latest at 11.’ I’m surprised no one’s tried to interview you.”
“Naw, the police have the case now. I only met him once, but it hit me—Well, I guess I thought . . . I dunno.”
“That you could save him? You can’t save people. Believe me.” She made a face, like she was an expert and I had no idea. She washed it away with a quick drink from her glass. “They’ll take everything from you if you let them,” she added a moment later. “If that’s why you do it, you’re gonna get burned out. Really fast.”
There was an edge to her then that I hadn’t noticed before. Almost cynical.
“So why do you do it?”
Before she could answer, menus came. A pair of well-dressed servers placed them gently in front of us. They were fancy. Really fancy. Leather-bound and heavy. And there were no prices, as if that kind of thing didn’t matter to the people who ate there.
I leaned over the table. “You really don’t have to pay, you know.”
She held up her menu so it covered all but her eyes, which scanned the room. “So nice, right? I don’t know what it says about me, but I’ve never been to a place like this. Thanks for suggesting it.”
The menu wasn’t prix fixe, but it wasn’t quite a la carte either. It was whatever Étranger wanted it to be, and it changed with his mind. That night we had our choice of four set meals, one for each of the seasons, wine and dessert included. I ordered Spring and was brought an appetizer of “cud-grass soup with boiled tripe.” I ordered it because it sounded intriguingly distasteful, but the tripe was thinly stripped and tender, almost like the noodles in my grandma’s chicken noodle soup, and the vegetable stock was salty and clear and pleasantly bitter with an aftertaste of jasmine and wild herbs. It actually tasted like I was lazing about in a sunlit field watching the clouds roll by. The accompanying entree was roasted hummingbirds, eight of them, glazed with sweet nectar and served on a bed of leafy greens and stuffed zucchini flowers. It was delicious.
Amber ordered Summer. Her appetizer was a shaved-ice curry that tasted way better than it had any reason to, with a texture sort of like iced coffee. It was creamy and cold and earthy and a little bit sweet, and the spice clung to our lips, which both of us licked two or three times after each bite.
“Wow,” she said, shifting in her seat, the spice warming her face like a tropical sun.
We shared each other’s dishes and mostly talked about the food, which was exotic enough to make easy conversation. Every dish was a novelty, unlike anything either of us had had before.
“How you holding up?” she asked finally in a lull between courses. She’d been dancing around the subject, waiting for a moment of comfort. By then we were both on our second glass of wine, although technically I hadn’t finished my first. She had. Buttery whites aren’t really my thing and this one made its way to her side of the table pretty quick.
She sloughed off my noncommittal reply. “Tell me about the case then, if you don’t want to talk about you.”
“It’s not that. I just don’t know what to say. How am I holding up? I dunno. If I say ‘not good,’ it makes it seem like I’m in real trouble. If I say ‘not bad,’ it makes it seem like everything’s great.”
“Do you overthink everything like this?”
“Ha. Yeah. Usually.”
“I suppose it’s good for your job, being a scientist and all.”
I put my napkin on the table. “The whole truth?”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
I thought for a moment. I thought about my stint in Africa, about the bodies there, how they had looked after a week in the sun, how the whole experience was totally different, how the international team I’d belonged to didn’t get much support from the local government, but how they stayed out of our way all the same. They knew that without us, and the money that came with, they’d have a problem they couldn’t hope to contain. So we did whatever needed to be done. Everyone on the ground was active, dedicated, smart. I felt like the dumbest guy there and loved it. So much to learn. And when we were ultimately successful, I had a sense of worth and accomplishment like I’d never felt before. I’d been a part of something bigger than myself. We’d taken direct action. We’d saved lives. We don’t get enough opportunities like that in life.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, we’d just found five dead bodies in a basement, and just because they were born on a different continent, there was some question as to whether their deaths would even be investigated. The mood in Africa had been electric. At the Chinese grocer, I felt like I was walking into the DMV. Everybody was waiting for someone in some other part of the big machine. When the case inevitably hit the news, instead of buckling down and doing what they should’ve done from the start, everyone overreacted, like it was a complete surprise.
I wanted to tell Amber all that. I wanted to tell her more people would die. I wanted to tell her about the ring around the city, and The Rat King, and the shiny steel padlock in the basement of an otherwise abandoned school, about the bone labyrinth and the eerie symbols I found there and under the grocer’s. But I didn’t. As I opened my mouth, I was saved by dessert, which appeared in front of us as if from nowhere.
“How’d you even get on this case?” she asked, poking at a sort of julep parfait. “You never told me.”
I nodded in recollection. She’d asked at one of our earlier meetings. I said it was a story and I’d have to tell her sometime. I never had.
“I wasn’t ducking the question. It’s just boring work stuff.”
“So give me the short version.”
“Well. Believe it or not, I was working on this program the department runs with the sex worker population.”
“Prostitutes? Really?”
“Yeah, and related activities.”
“What’s related to prostitution?”
“Strippers. Porn stars. Burlesque shows.”
“Burlesque?”
“Hey, man.” I held up my hands. “It’s a thing.”
She was taking tiny sips of her wine, which was almost gone, to make it last longer.
“You want another?” I asked, nodding to the glass.
“I probably shouldn’t.”
I took a drink of my own.
“That doesn’t sound boring at all, Doctor Alexander. What were you doing with those prostitutes?”
I thought for a moment how to explain it. “Okay, so there’s two parts to the survey. There’s a stratified area probability sample where we break the city into grids and then sample some percent of the grids in each borough.”
“What do you mean grid?”
“A standa
rdized city block, basically. Once a block gets selected, we do a survey in that grid. We talk to everyone we can about, for example, whether they’ve ever bought or sold sex. If so, how often, how much did they pay, did they use protection. All that.”
“And people answer these questions honestly?”
“Everybody always asks that, but you’d be surprised. We actually have a way of testing for honesty, too. We ask multiple questions that get at the same thing in different ways and we space them out so that it’s hard for people to hide when they’re lying. Every response gets a congruence score. Responses with low internal congruence have a higher chance of containing falsehoods and are either weighted down or discarded entirely. And the instrument itself, the survey questionnaire, is tested first—calibrated, we say, against verifiable data, so we’re confident it’s working as expected.”
“I totally didn’t realize it was that complicated.”
I realized I was getting defensive. “Yeah, it’s really rigorous, not like a marketing survey or whatever. Point is, people love talking about themselves. The johns, maybe not so much, but the pros do. An average day for them is all about the customer, and a lot of them don’t have the best home life.”
“That’s sad.”
“So, if you can get them to open up, they’ll talk your ear off. They’ll tell you all this stuff you don’t need, like the first guy they blew and the sick shit all their ex-boyfriends wanted them to do. But then, it helps that it’s all anonymous. We don’t take names. They can give us a fake one, it doesn’t matter. We don’t save anything identifying.
“Anyway, that’s one part. Along with the field survey, we also do one of the prison population on the theory that if we can establish the relationship between the prison population, which is known, and the wider city, which is unknown, then we can get excellent stats on, for example, the number of sex workers in the city, or the prevalence of HIV and how it’s moving, or whatever.”