Concrete Savior

by Yvonne Navarro

  Charlie put the phone back in his pocket, ignoring the ring tone a couple of minutes later that signaled a message from Brenda. He’d waited all day yesterday for his brother—God, that was a strange thing to say—to call him, but each time the cell rang, it was only Brenda. By noon today, he’d given up on the idea that Eran would call him and decided to come downtown to Grant Park, check out the lakefront and the sights. He’d gotten only as far as Buckingham Fountain before admitting he wasn’t at all interested in the museums and the water. Lake Michigan wasn’t much different from Lake Erie, and he could visit there anytime back home. It was kind of neat to sit here on the edge of the fountain with the water arcing so beautifully behind him; every now and then the wind would catch the spray just right and bathe him in a fine mist that felt wonderfully cooling in the sticky afternoon heat.

  Wow. Charlie would have never imagined he’d be here, watching the people pass while his mind churned over the newfound knowledge of his relatives. This city was so far removed from his hometown of Van Wert that it might as well have been on a different planet. Races, religions, gays and straights, even the way people dressed. If cities were selections in a vending machine, Chicago would be to the left and marked EXOTIC, while Van Wert would be all the way to the right under GENERIC. Compared to this maelstrom of diversity, where he lived was colorless and boring, utterly bland. Chicago was so exciting to him, so enticing. He couldn’t help wondering if he could actually live here, leave his everyday nothing of an existence behind, find work, and immerse himself in a life of nonstop action.

  But did he want that? Did he really? Charlie watched a gorgeous young woman in a chic designer suit stroll past. She could be anything—a lawyer, a real estate agent, some kind of business consultant. Would someone like her ever be interested in him? He thought about his wife, but it was hardly a fair comparison. Brenda was average height, but her sweet, rather mousy personality always made people remember her as short. Nothing special in the shoulder-length brown hair, brown eyes. Hers was a typical USA-girl’s heart-shaped face, the same one that was on a million small-town girls from coast to coast. Their daughter, Michelle, was probably going to grow up looking and acting exactly like her mom, and Bryan was another average American kid. Jesus, was there nothing at all special about their life?

  Maybe not their life, but Charlie had found something pretty different, right here in Chicago with brother Eran. Maybe Eran wasn’t being sociable yet, but Charlie was sure he’d come around. After all, the guy had probably been as shocked as he to learn there was a brother. Any inclination to nurture a rlationship with the elder Redmond had disintegrated with the door Douglas had slammed in his face, but Charlie definitely wanted to get close to Eran, to become a part of his life. What Eran had going on here seemed so much better, so much more interesting, than Charlie’s existence. Eran was a detective, probably tracking down killers and drugs and God only knew what else. Charlie got up every morning at six o’clock, showered and ate a bit of breakfast, then dropped the kids off at school and was at his desk in his adopted father’s very unexciting insurance agency by eight. He’d been working there ever since he’d graduated from college, and although the business would someday be his, it still wasn’t his name on the agency sign outside, was it?

  What would it be like to live here, to go home to a woman who was something a little jazzier than a housewife? To someone . . . well, like Brynna.

  Charlie frowned and rubbed his eyes. Funny how close his wife’s name was to Eran’s roommate—which, by the way, he didn’t believe for a heartbeat. No one had a bombshell like that in the house and didn’t try to make things more than platonic. There was something about her that Charlie couldn’t actually describe, something almost intoxicating, and that kept thoughts of her coming back again and again. He’d seen her for maybe ten or fifteen seconds, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He hadn’t been entirely honest with Eran about not being in this for the money. He wasn’t, exactly, but there had been times—okay, lots of times—that Charlie had wondered if his birth mother, or even both parents, were millionaires. That had turned out to be nothing but a stupid fantasy, of course, but at least he could say his dreams had been based on fact, specifically an article he’d read in his wife’s More magazine just last year about Elizabeth McNabb, the Jell-O heiress who’d ultimately ended up with a big fat nothing.

  Well, Douglas Redmond certainly hadn’t wasted any time shattering that bubble, had he? Nasty right from the start, and if what Eran had said was true, the elder Redmond was more than despicable and had been directly responsible for their mother’s death. Sitting here and thinking about it, Charlie couldn’t help shuddering; he didn’t know much about genetics but he hoped to hell he was nothing like his biological father.

  Nah, he’d be okay. Look at Eran—even though the old man had raised him, his brother had turned out fantastic, better than fantastic. He had a great job, a beautiful “roommate”—right—and none of the dreary American Dream responsibilities that hung over Charlie’s head on a daily basis. Man, that was the kind of life Charlie Hogue could definitely settle into.

  But if he did, he’d make sure that “roommate” status was changed real quick.

  Nine

  Glenn Klinger switched his uniform for his street clothes, then bunched up the dirty uniform and threw it on the floor of his locker with the rest of his gear. Normally he would have tucked it into a plastic bag and taken it home for washing, but those days were over. He’d done some long hard thinking since last Friday, when he’d fallen in front of the subway train and that guy had jumped down there and saved his life. Mainly he’d been thinking about whether or not he was actually worth saving.

  He figured most people would probably get a whole new outlook after a big event like that, doing the happy dance and spouting off about how grateful they were, how they suddenly had all this appreciation for so many of the people in their life, all the little things that meant so much. On the heels of that would be worry over why they’d gotten sick to begin with, would it happen again, oh my God, yadda yadda yadda.

  But not him. Not Glenn Klinger.

  He wasn’t happy. He wasn’t sad. He was just . . . there. Calm. Methodical. Accepting.

  He’d been visited by more doctors in the two days following the Big Event (he’d begun to actually capitalize those words in his mind) than he’d seen in his entire life. A couple of days in the hospital and, even though he had medical insurance, the only tangible thing he knew he would end up with out of this was going to be a big bill. The doctors all had a lot to say about what had happened to him, but the truth was Glenn hadn’t been paying attention. He cooperated with the exams and nodded through the speeches, but at the end of it all when they sent him home, he hadn’t a clue if the Big Event had been a seizure, a drop in blood sugar because he hadn’t been eating properly, or just a really bad fucking headache. And in reality, he simply didn’t care.

  What Glenn was sure of was that even as miserable as he was, he didn’t want to die in the subway, alone and face down in some godforsaken puddle of filth. He was going to die, of course—everyone was, sooner or later—but not alone. Not even in his crummy two-room apartment, where his body would only be found when he didn’t show up at work for a week or so and the people who lived across the hall—who’d never spoken to him—noticed a bad smell.

  No, not like that.

  After the hospital had called his work (not because they thought someone should know, but because they needed to verify his medical insurance), Lenore had never so much as picked up the telephone to check on him. She’d known what happened because her precious Bill was buddy-buddy with Glenn’s boss, and that blabbermouth asshole had told just enough people to spread it all over the place within a matter of minutes. A couple of folks had asked after him on Monday and Tuesday—

  “Heard you were sick, Glenn. Sorry about that. Hey, don’t forget that box of trash in the kitchen’s gotta go out, too.”

  �
�Hope you’re feeling better. By the way, we’re out of paper towels in the ladies’ room.”

  —but most cared as much about him being sick as they cared about him being well: if it didn’t involve cleaning something up or that juicy little saga about his ex-wife and Bill, it was exactly nothing in the scope of their much more interesting lives.

  Now, standing in front of his locker and staring into it, Glenn felt better than he had in a long time. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to be able to sustain that equanimity unless he took some measures. There had been some soul-searching involved, but he’d finally decided that it would all be worth it. His world had gone gray, as dull and colorless as the industrial floors and trash cans that he spent so much of each day cleaning. No amount of scrubbing or waxing or care would change their color or make anyone notice them. His life was like that now. Lenore had been the one who’d put the color into his life, not only by the thousands of little things that she’d done throughout their marriage but just by her presence. He had loved her so much, would have done anything for her, but she had taken it all away, had drained his entire existence of every bit of beauty. And for what? A handsomer face? A bigger paycheck? Better sex? He’d never know, and at this point, he didn’t want to.

  But then, it wasn’t entirely Lenore’s fault, was it? She couldn’t exactly take herself. No, someone else had taken her, and Glenn knew who that someone was, all right.

  Bill Cusack, that’s who.

  And he hadn’t been satisfied with ut sng Glenn’s wife and his happiness, and even his dog. He’d had to destroy Glenn’s pride, too, talk about him behind his back, undermine him to the same guys Glenn had once considered his friends. Glenn had never heard the rumors firsthand, of course, but he’d come in at the end of enough conversations to read the guilty looks and flushed faces, caught enough words to definitely get the gist of things—

  “. . . said he didn’t even fight it, didn’t have the—”

  “. . . gave her a much better—”

  “. . . wanted a baby but could never afford—”

  —on and on, all that shit flying fast and furious, building on itself until Glenn knew that whatever grain of truth might have once existed, that elusive thing that he himself didn’t even know, finally disappeared forever.

  When he’d pulled himself out of bed this morning, Glenn realized he was tired of all this. Not just tired—that was too gentle a word for what he felt. Exhausted, spent to his very bones. He couldn’t bear to go even one more day of wading through the looks and the innuendo, and if he couldn’t do that, how on earth was he going to face it again tomorrow, and Friday? And next week, next month, next year? He had seventeen years put in toward his pension at this plant, and for a man with nothing but a GED under his belt and no other skills, he’d built up to making a decent buck over those nearly two decades. Was it fair that he should have to give it up, have to find another job—and in this crappy economy that in itself was an iffy proposition—and start over just because that damned Bill Cusack had ruined it all?

  No, it wasn’t.

  Glenn had been perfectly happy the way he was before Lenore had left him, but that avenue was forever out of reach. She wasn’t coming back, no matter what he did, but he simply couldn’t go on the way he was. He just couldn’t stand it. So Glenn had decided this morning that although he was going to be forced to change his life, he wanted to do it in an entirely different manner. And while he was at it, those who had steered him along the path that had made him this miserable would share in his revelation, in his change. In fact, Bill Cusack, his boss, and all the others who had smirked and talked about him behind his back, they would all change with him. If he was going to lose everything that he had worked so hard to get . . .

  So would they.

  Even Lenore, oh you betcha. A man didn’t stay married to a woman for as long as he and Lenore had been together without getting to know what Glenn called the unchangeables, those things that someone could not, would not, alter for anyone. For his ex-wife, one of those unchangeables was going out to dinner on Wednesday, her middle-of-the-week break from cooking and housecleaning. Because Mr. Bill had more cash than Glenn, Lenore had taken to coming down to the plant to meet him so he could take her to one of the pricey yuppie places downtown, maybe Lawry’s Steak House or Wildfire over on Erie Street—both places he’d talked about trying when they’d been together but had never been able to afford. She’d be here at four-thirty sharp so that her and Billy-boy could get to the restaurant and snag a table before the after-work crowds started to build. That made Glenn have to wait it out for an hour, but what was an hour when you were planning as spectacular an event as he was?

  He checked his watch and was surprised to find he had only five minutes before the half-hour mark. The time had passed more quickly than he thought it would. He’d expected to be scared and nervous, pounding heart, sweaty palms, the whole menagerie of physical side effects that a thousand movies and books proclaimed. Instead, Glenn felt overcome by a deep, almost numbing calm, like what he imagined he’d experience standing on an empty beach and staring out at a still, silent ocean that stretched away as far as he could see. It wasn’t just calm. It was acceptance.

  He reached inside his locker for the last time and pulled out his jacket, then tugged it on. It was heavy and bulky around the pockets, uncomfortably hot in the overheated employee locker room. Glenn zipped it up to the middle of his chest anyway, then closed the locker door and made sure his collar was straight. As an afterthought, he opened the locker again and tossed his wallet and his car keys on top of his dirty uniform.

  Then he went to say farewell to Lenore.

  BILL CUSACK’S OFFICE WAS on the second floor of the plant, at the start of a long hallway and just past the only stairwell. There were nine other offices down that hall, with the biggest and best being the plant owner’s at the far end.

  Glenn met his ex-wife as she was coming out of her new husband’s office at precisely twenty-two minutes before five o’clock. Bill was hot on her heels, his hand resting somewhere on her back in a pride-of-ownership gesture that, combined with the way his upper lip and eyebrow lifted in simultaneous arrogance when his gaze found Glenn’s, really said everytng about how furnishing his life had vampirized everything good from Glenn’s.

  “Glenn,” Lenore said. His presence on the second floor outside his normal working hours surprised her just enough to make her pause, then she tried to recover. “What are you doing up here?”

  “I came to say goodbye,” he said. He pulled out his gun and shot her in the face.

  The rebound from the pistol, a not very well maintained Sig Sauer P226 that he’d lifted from his father’s nightstand during a visit the previous weekend, was harsher than Glenn expected, but it felt good. Lenore’s head exploded and her feet came forward and up like someone had yanked on an invisible rope around her ankles. Her body’s momentum slapped Bill’s hand hard enough backward to nearly spin him sideways. His eyes went so wide and round that for one long moment Glenn could see white all the way around the man’s light blue eyes. Bill opened his mouth but since Glenn didn’t want to hear anything the guy had to say, his next shot went into Bill’s throat, nearly decapitating him.

  “Wife stealer,” Glenn said. His gaze cut to the right, where the plant manager and his boss, he of the scream-at-your-employees-daily mentality, had run to the door of his own office and was now trying to scramble back into it. Glenn stepped over the two bodies and followed him, watching with vague amusement as the older man tripped and went down, then scuttled along the paper- and box-strewn floor—his office was just as dirty and cluttered as the manufacturing areas he oversaw—as he tried to find a place to hide.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Paul?” Glenn was rather pleased that his voice was clear and still unflustered, with no hint of stress in it. Yes, he was definitely meant to do this today. His boss was a fairly big man with an iron-colored crew cut and a double chin; even so, he was movi
ng around on the floor with the agility of a scared cockroach so it took three shots to finally take him out. Glenn’s first one got Paul in the leg, and he missed on the second try, probably because the old fuck started screaming like a baby and startled him. Paul was bleeding nicely as he tried to wedge himself between his desk and the wall, so it was easy for Glenn to walk over and shoot him between the eyes. Glenn was definitely liking the head shots—they did a very satisfying job of obliterating everything about these people from his memory, starting with the way they looked. For this man, it was also an excellent way of ensuring the son of a bitch would never again scream at some luckless employee.

  As Glenn had expected, the hallway was filling with screams and the sound of running footsteps, people heading toward the stairs then drawing up short when they were confronted by the messy double-stack of corpses. It would be only seconds before someone got up the nerve to step over the bodies. He needed to get out there again before any of them got away.