The Spaces Between Us

by Ethan Johnson

  She glanced around the room. What time was it? Like she cared. What day was it? Like she cared. Oh, crap, Tuesday. She had to be at the rink at 11 o’clock. She turned to her alarm clock. 9:58. Damn.

  She could pull herself together quickly enough. She didn’t care enough about her job to spend hours prepping, choosing the perfect outfit and perfecting her makeup. She could do a U-turn in the shower, brush her teeth, run a hair brush through a few times, and just need to throw something on that was clean—or clean enough.

  Not long after that ritual concluded, she was in the kitchen rustling up something for breakfast. She reached for Agnes’s oatmeal, then thought better of it and opted for cereal. She looked up at the kitchen clock. 10:17.

  This was going to be tight. The rink was too far for walking, at least if she wanted to arrive anywhere close to on time. She asked Mother for a ride, but she said Father had taken the car to Roxbury and wouldn’t be home until later in the afternoon. That left Agnes, and she didn’t drive. Gracie had a driver's license but no car. Agnes had no license and no car. She was utterly reliant on either walking or rides from others—usually Father.

  10:25. There wasn’t a bus to or near the rink either. She went to the coat rack by the front door pulled her cell phone out of her coat pocket. The battery was down to 35%, because Marc had called four times last night and sent text messages, the most recent being time stamped at 5:30 A.M. They were all variations on “Is Agnes home” and “Please tell me if Agnes is still missing”.

  She blew a crop of hair up away from her eye. She looked at Agnes, who sat in the front room, sipping tea. “Is Agnes home? Sheeze, get real.” She tapped out a quick “Yeah” and launched her phone dialer. She scrolled through her contacts and chose one urgently.

  10:30. “Hey Leslie, it’s Gracie. Did you leave already? (Pause.) Great, can you come get me? (Pause.) No, my Dad took the car. (Pause.) It’s too far to walk. Warren’s going to ride my ass all day if I’m late again. Please? (Pause.) Okay, thanks, see you out front.”

  10:35. Gracie stood at the end of the driveway. A grey sedan pulled up. A blonde pony-tailed girl waved from the driver’s seat. Gracie stepped gingerly around some ice patches and got in the passenger side. “Thanks, Les, you’re a lifesaver.” She fastened her seat belt.

  “No problem, Gracie, but you’re really cutting it close.”

  Gracie looked at her battery level. 33%. She held down the power button and waited for the phone to turn dark. There wasn’t anybody she urgently wanted to talk to right now.

  10:59. She stepped up to the front counter and adjusted her name tag. It said “Lauren” on it. Warren, the rink manager, insisted on real names. “This isn’t the roller derby,” he declared the last ten times Gracie complained about it.

  11:00. The front door opened, and a group of seniors toddled in, herded along by an enthusiastic activities director.

  “Hi, welcome to Roller Blaze,” Gracie chimed.

  CHAPTER 17: TRASH DAY

  Thirty minutes away from Marc’s apartment, Gene Swolski sat in his office, reviewing GPS records from the day before. He thought he’d seen some serious tomfoolery in his day, back when he was new to Streets and Sanitation, where guys would run their route only to spend half of it parked in an alley behind a bar. Hell, he’d been that guy more than once, back then. Now that he was older and kicked up to management, he figured he’d seen all the tricks and wasn’t about to hear any bullcrap about how the route got done, on one of the busiest trash days of the year: the Monday after Christmas.

  Trash pickup was no joke as it was, and customer service got more than their fair share of complaints week in and week out without a major waste-producing holiday in the mix. Refuse carts got filled to overflowing, recycling containers picked up some of the slack, and the ground held the rest. The trucks strictly dumped the carts. The spillover was someone else’s problem.

  So why in holy hell any of his haulers was going to tell him or anyone else with a straight face that he ran his route only to come back damn near empty defied comprehension. Somebody was going to find out in no uncertain terms that Streets had zero tolerance for jerkoffs.

  A knock sounded at the door. “Yeah,” Gene answered.

  The door creaked open and two men dressed in waste hauler uniforms filed in.

  “Siddown,” Gene ordered.

  The men took their seats on his hard plastic chairs, designed to be uncomfortable. Gene didn’t entertain visitors unless it was absolutely necessary. Today it was necessary.

  He rubbed his forehead and dropped a wad of papers on his desk. “Okay, fellas, let’s have it. Why, in your infinite fricking wisdom, did you think that driving your route meant not actually, oh, I dunno, picking up the garbage?”

  The two men gulped and looked at each other.

  “B-b-but…” One of the men tried to reply.

  Gene waved him off. “This is Streets and fricking Sanitation, fellas. You wanna drive around in circles, you go drive a forklift. If you work here, you work, here. Got it?” He tapped the desk emphatically with a pointed finger at intervals while he spoke.

  “Um, uh, well, Mister Eugene, I uh…” said the other man.

  Gene raised his hand. “I’m writing you dinks up. That’s gonna be the end of that caper.”

  The man who drove the truck found his voice. “Well now, Mister Eugene, I don’t know what you’re talking about, because me and Jerry, we worked the whole route yesterday. Dumped the carts, all of ‘em. Every single one, didn’t we, Jerry?”

  Jerry nodded, eyes wide. “We sure did, Leon. Every single one, just like you say.”

  Gene wasn’t having it. “Then where’s the fricking trash, geniuses?”

  The two men looked at each other, then Leon spoke. “I d-don’t know, M-Mister Eugene. Jerry set them all up, I dumped them in the truck, set ‘em back down, and Jerry put ‘em back. Just like always.”

  Jerry nodded vigorously. “That’s how it was, Mister Eugene sir, just like he said.”

  Gene leaned back in his seat and blew a puff of air through his mustache. He rubbed the worn arm rests on his squeaky office chair and gave each man a hard look.

  “Let me get this straight. You guys go out there, Monday after Christmas, am I getting this so far? Jerry pulls out a refuse cart, Leon, you dump it, and hardly anything falls out, but you go through the motions anyway, and Jerry puts it back, and all of this is silky smooth because Jerry here isn’t digging through piles of trash, no, he just rolls them la-de-dah up to the truck, and then rolls them right back with no problems, rinse, repeat, and you’re off at your next stop. What’d I miss?”

  Jerry shifted in his seat. “There wasn’t anything in the way, Mister Eugene. Just like you say.”

  Gene squinted at the men, then picked up his desk phone. He punched some numbers. “Yeah, service? (Pause.) Yeah, this is Gene. Listen, how many complaints are you getting from Blue Route 13 this morning? (Pause.) Yeah, I’ll hold, why not.” Gene looked up darkly at the two men. Leon tried to make his case once more. “I’m on the phone,” he snapped. “Yeah, I’m here. (Pause.) And that’s Blue Route 13. One-Three, is that right? And blue, like blue jeans? (Pause.) Oh. (Pause.) No, that’s all I needed, sweetheart. Bye.” He slammed the phone down. “Get outta my office.”

  The two men squirmed. “B-but Mister Eugene sir, please don’t write us up, we did our jobs, honest we did.”

  “We’ll discuss that later. Out.”

  The men leapt to their feet and were out the door as quickly as possible.

  Gene rubbed his forehead. This was new and improved bullcrap, that was for sure. He got up and grabbed his coat from the back of his office door. On his way out of the office, someone asked where he was going at two in the afternoon.

  “I’m taking a field trip. Gonna do a little fact-checking.”

  Moments later he was warming up the engine of a company car, cursing the slow defroster. Those jokers were in for a world of hurt, whatever this was. If it was
April, he might have had a laugh, maybe. But not now, and not about this.

  A practically empty truck and no complaints about garbage pickup? No fricking way.

  CHAPTER 18: SICK DAY

  Marc let his apartment door slam behind him as he shook off the cold. He tossed his coat aside and revealed his dubious seasonal wardrobe: running shoes with no socks, loose-fitting sweat pants spattered with paint, a Middle Tennessee t-shirt, and the look of a madman.

  He walked over to his living room and knelt beside the pillar candle—the very one that had brought Agnes to him the night before—and groomed the wick. He reached into his pocket and found… nothing. He patted both pockets and groaned. He retraced his steps back to his coat and pulled out a small paper bag. He opened it and dumped a clear yellow plastic cigarette lighter into his free hand.

  Marc knelt beside the candle again. He held the lighter at the ready, and then took a moment to consider his strategy. All available evidence suggested that lighting that candle and then blowing it out would result in the re-appearance of Agnes, and with her, more answers. Namely, how this candle trick worked. Before he began, he felt like he should say something.

  “Hocus pocus, abracadabra.”

  He flicked the lighter and the wick soon accepted his offering, glowing yellow-orange. It swayed and flickered for a few minutes, and then he decided that was enough. He puffed at the flame and it flared violently away from him, and then resumed its usual sway.

  “Seriously?” He drew in a deeper breath, got closer to the wick, and blew. The candle still burned brightly. “Oh, I see how it is.”

  This was far from his preferred method to put out a lit candle, but now was the time for decisive action. He licked his thumb and forefinger and pinched the swaying flame. The last time he had ever done it, he heard a zzzt sound as the flame vanished and was replaced by a thin pillar of smoke. Instead, any available neighbors heard “EEEE-YOWW” followed by a string of curses.

  “Dammit, Agnes, come on!” He licked his fingers again as he walked hurriedly to the kitchen sink and flipped up the faucet lever. Cool water ran over his sore fingers and angry redness started to show when he shut the water off.

  He ambled over to his second-hand sofa and flopped down. He watched the flame sway back and forth hypnotically. He felt his jaw slacken and his eyes glaze. This was a fine way to spend a workday, he reckoned. It would have been bad enough manning the skeleton crew that anchored the Dead Zone, and now he was going out this week on an unexcused absence. He felt like his excuse was valid: no sleep, hallucinations, family emergency—in that Gracie wasn’t picking up his calls—sorcery… he was a mess. The sick line didn’t have video capabilities or else his boss might have been more inclined to excuse his absence. He did his best to sell the stomach flu over the phone, but his boss was resolute and literally not hearing it.

  That wasn’t going to come up during his annual performance review or anything, he thought, miserably.

  “Science, Marc,” he told himself, shaking off the hypnosis. He would need to recreate what had happened the night before. Except, was it strictly lighting the candle that brought Agnes back? He had said some things. He heard his thinking voice tell him things. He felt that pressure against his forehead. None of those things were happening now. He looked at the lighter on the coffee table and winced. He had used the stove burner last time! Maybe the stove was part of it. Maybe it had to be a gas flame. Maybe the gas fumes gave him a deep spiritual connection to… something… and long story short, Agnes was in his living room. He leaned forward and gave the flame an emphatic puff. The flame persisted.

  He signaled defeat and laid down on the sofa, pulling the throw blanket down on top of himself. He remembered buying it on clearance at one of the home decorating stores out in the Western suburbs. He remembered sending Gracie photos through his phone along with jokes about how it really pulled the room together. He missed Gracie. He looked up at the kitchen counter and wondered if Gracie ever replied to any of his texts, that is, after she sent...

  9:29am: Yeah

  ...and he replied…

  9:40am: Yeah she’s still missing? Yeah she’s home? What r u saying

  ...and then never heard anything back. He tried calling Gracie again and got rolled straight to voice mail. He held up one end of the blanket, and let it drop.

  He stared blankly at the ceiling and watched a round light pattern bounce around. He glanced over at the candle and saw the languid flame continue swaying like willow branches on a pleasant summer day. The pattern on the ceiling coincided with the point of flame to his right. He picked up the corners of the blanket closest to him and held them up, then let go.

  Marc smacked his forehead. “Idiot!”

  He had been going at this the entirely wrong way! He quickly sat up, and the flame rustled with excitement as well. See, it agrees, he thought. He draped the blanket over his knees, and then held up the top half of the blanket over his head by the corners.

  “With this blanket, I go to my sister.”

  He flopped the blanket over his head and waited to be transported to another dimension, or back home to his family. All he saw and felt was fleece. He sighed through the fabric and leaned back into the sofa. The blanket fell to his waist, and his already untamed hair stuck out even more thanks to an infusion of static electricity.

  “Think, Marc, think.” He stared at the lazy flame perched atop the plain white pillar candle and let the hypnotic feelings take over again. He was going to crack this wide open. He was going about this all wrong, he mused. He was winging it, and trying to piece things together verbatim, and on at best an hour of sleep. He didn’t remember ever sleeping since Agnes’s latest disappearing act, which meant he surely must have, if only briefly.

  He shook off the dark curtain of sleep that was lowering over his eyes and leapt back to his feet. He went to his desk and hunted around the desktop for something, then moved on to the drawers. He produced a yellow legal pad. He felt around the desktop again and found a stray pen. He tested it in the upper left-hand corner of the legal pad, and an engraved circle soon filled in with blue ink after a few revolutions. He let out a satisfied “Yes!”

  Soon after, he was back on the sofa, with the legal pad balanced on his knees, pen at the ready. He thought: what were the elements of the night before? Or the entire day? He tapped the ink end of the pen onto the pad and tried to remember the order of events. Maybe he should just write down what he could remember and then put it all in order. He was too fried to make logical sense of things. Get it on paper, that was the thing to do. Get it on paper, and sort it later. Tap tap tap.

  Marc began to write.

  Is this thing on? Ha

  No, that wasn’t right. Why couldn’t he remember? There, the candle. Write that down… candle. He tapped the legal pad instead. He tensed up and sucked in his breath. The candle! Write it down! Why was this so damned difficult?

  Tap tap tap tap tap

  This was ridiculous. He was sure that he could pass the Illinois bar exam with his eyes closed, for as impossible as this deceptively simple task was proving to be. Explain the ins and outs of copyright law? No problem. Write effing “candle” on a legal pad? Nope.

  He felt his head and eyelids grow heavy. He couldn’t fight it anymore. He needed sleep, and trick candle or not he needed to regroup and try this exercise again later. He reached over and pushed the coffee table away from the sofa. No sense setting everything on fire in his sleep. He lolled his head on the armrest of the sofa and kept the legal pad up against his thighs, pen still at the ready. Soon the apartment was filled with the serene glow of the pillar candle, loud snoring, and the scratching sound of pen on paper.

  CHAPTER 19: SURPRISE INSPECTION

  Gene pulled up to the curb and shifted his company car into Park. This spot was close enough, he decided, and he had no intentions of feeding the parking meter. The cops usually ignored municipal vehicles if they kept things moving. He’d only need fifteen minutes
tops to get what he came for, then get back to the office in time to give two jokers a serious reaming.

  He slammed his car door and stuffed a digital camera into his coat pocket. Maybe the route rats weren’t going to say anything, but he was happy to let the pictures do all the talking.

  He marched purposefully along the side of a convenience mart, and then took a sharp right into the neighboring alley. He walked up to the trash dumpster and slid the side feeder door open. Let’s sneak preview this sucker, he thought. He’d get dramatic shots with the top flaps wide open as well. He just wanted to get a good visual confirmation that this was as good a starting point as any. Never mind the commercial pickups were done by the privates. Set the baseline, he figured.

  He peeked into the blue steel container and scrunched his nose. It stunk like years-old garbage, no question. But there wasn’t anything in there but a stray beer bottle.

  Gene pulled his head back out of the container and slammed the side door shut. “Jesus.”

  He was going to be thorough about this, or as thorough as he had to be. He made his way to the first city stop on in the alley and found his first target. He flipped open a recycling bin and was greeted with a single sales flyer for bedroom furniture that wafted up and away. He let the lid drop with a thunk.

  He continued his authoritative gait down the alleyway, zig-zagging across the alley, looking for the gotcha moment that would nail his guys to the wall. Nothing behind Don Gino’s Ristorante. Nothing behind a two-story brick bungalow. Thunk. Nothing behind a house across the alleyway. Thunk. Lid after lid came down. Nothing behind the Currency Exchange. Thunk. Nothing behind the Cross Winds Apartments. Thunk.

  Gene blew a cloud of vapor in the chilled afternoon air. There was nothing to say about this. It was an honest-to-God miracle: The Immaculate Trash Collection. He let out a puzzled “huh.”

  He aimed his camera for a moment, then switched it off and stuffed it back in his coat. You can’t prove a negative, the thought, bitterly. He’d put the guys on notice and tell them he had his eye on them, but that was all he could do at this point. He took one long look at the far end of the alley. Nothing.