It’s orange light leaking through the windows now—from the sodium streetlamps outside. I’m surprised their light can reach up this high, but then, how often am I conscious at this hour? Now that I’m awake, it’s not so bad. I threw out my lighted alarm clock years ago, so I wasn’t fretting over how much snooze time I wasn’t logging…and with the positioning of my particular apartment in this ugly building, I didn’t have to deal with any door-slamming or bed-squeaking or other night clamor from my neighbors. I still ain’t sleepy, but it’s…peaceful, lying here without anything else to do. Or at least, it is once I get my mind off Darryl. Sometimes your brain is like a dog, worrying on long-dried-up bone. It can take some effort to wrench it away.
Everything in my room is touched by the orange light outside (so lightly touched, it seems like the things in my room are only smoke)—it’s still late/early, in other words, when the racket from the apartment above starts up, right over my head.
After I’ve exhausted every profanity in my arsenal (then repeated them through once more, just to be sure I didn’t miss any), I lie there staring at the ceiling, listening against my will. Being a lifelong bachelor, I know my way around apartment noises. The longer you’ve shared walls with the rest of humanity, the less the wall-sounds surprise you. Eventually you come to recognize the humm-boom of hip hop “music”, the difference between TV show dramatics and the screams of a real fight, and all the little noises besides—drawers rolling open, showers blasting on, that sorta thing. All muffled, but still identifiable.
I couldn’t be sure about this, but to me it sounded like broken machine. Washer-dryer was my first guess, but I figured even in this bizarro building the water lines for something like that would be piled on top of each other, regardless of the apartment. It sounded like a great motor struggling—but without the rattling clanks of dishes, it couldn’t be a dishwasher.
Ruuuum-duduh, ruuuum-DUDUH!
Is somebody’s icemaker on the fritz?
“Sounds like the whole damn thing needs to be put out of its misery. Drug out into the street and shot.” The best thing that cat ever said.
Then I moaned. Who’d be runnin’ a piece of junk like that that at this hour? Who’d be startin’ it? Ugehgh, and when people start something like that up, they usually mean to run it for a while…Although, hearing an alarming rkrkrkrkrk, I wonder if it might just fly apart on its own, and THAT would solve my problem as well as an off switch.
A switch! I lean over and stick my arm down no-man’s-land and plug in sis’s machine. I throw the switch.
Nothin’. Dead as a doornail. I swear aloud.
The muffled ruin continues above me. I want to weep but settle for a groan instead. Sleep ain’t gonna happen tonight.
* * *
It went on for hours. By the time it shut off, it was the wee hours, morning’s cool light leaking in around the edges of my pinned-up blackout drapes. A refrigerator, I decided. The yahoo above me had a busted refrigerator that sounded like a Weed Wacker taking the starring role in that painting The Scream.
“You all right, Mr. Ray?” One of my kids breaks into my thoughts. I’d come to work on automatic, the two hours of sleep I got not enough to combat a bad case of the stares.
“You don’t look so good,” he adds.
I don’t have to look directly at the other kids to see they’re worried, too. Without looking right at them, I catch the wide whites of their eyes under the dull fluorescent lights, the concern there.
I could almost weep—besides sis, who cares about ol’ Ray Belga?—which is how I know I’m dead on my feet, ’cuz that ain’t nothing I’d cry about.
“Guy in the apartment above me’s got a fridge on the fritz. Kept me up all night—makin’ noises like a chainsaw.” I heave a grin up onto my face. “But if it’s that broke, he’s probably getting it fixed today. Mean, can’t shut it off for too long—your food’d go bad.”
They start nodding, eager, like they want it fixed for me.
Seeing that makes my eyes sting a little, so I keep on, gruff as a bear. “He has to get it fixed tonight—if it kept me up a floor below ’im, no way he got a wink in.”
The kid who asked what was up dares put his hand on my shoulder.
“It ain’t nothing to worry about!” I snap, throwing it off. “Now get ready for the rush!”
They hop to.
* * *
I admit, I’m next to useless during that day’s pretzel stampede. I stand in the corner like an old yellow mop and try to look managerial, but I think I fell asleep with my eyes open at least once.
“Feel better, Mr. Ray,” says one of my kids, a short black girl with ringlets down to her shoulders. Winnie. I think that’s her name. She says it to me on my way out, which is good, ’cuz her sayin’ what she said makes my eyes sting again.
I buy some gum from a candy store and chew it while I’m driving home to keep me awake. If only it’d been caffeinated.
It’s quiet when I get into my apartment. I pause in my bedroom, looking up at the ceiling, but hallelujah, no noise. A repairman must’ve been in. I try the switch on my noise machine. The static sound turns my knees to jelly and I collapse on my mattress, out cold like a boxer.
* * *
Oh no…
I don’t know why I’m even thinking it. But the thought comes to me right as my eyes open. Two hard blinks later, my noise machine stops again.
“What the shit?!”
I don’t even bother unplugging it this time. How can it not work like this? What gives it the right to start and stop working as it pleases?
I don’t ask for a lot. A job. Food. Place and time to sleep, and for one damn machine to do its job without going off on a smoke break whenever it feels like it.
I lie back in the canyon. The pit. I’m exhausted, but my brain won’t shut up, I don’t wanna go to work like this tomorrow what’s wrong with my box I can’t afford an electrician to come look I can’t afford to take a day off… It’s like my brain’s on a treadmill from Hell. Every worst case scenario and question scrolls through my head like a ticker tape, and when it runs out of things to worry about, it just starts over again. Not always from the beginning, but from earlier thoughts, it jumps to other thoughts already pre-chewed, until all my thoughts are mush…until one new thought enters the stream: if I catch one of my kids early enough tomorrow, I could trade shifts with them.
And that’s when the cacophony upstairs starts again.
RuuuumduduhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwhummwhuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmRK-RK-RK-RK-TAKKATAKKATAKKATAKKTAKKATAKKA
The racket doesn’t let up for hours.
But when it does, my room’s still smoky with sodium orange light. And when I reach over for the noise machine’s switch, it starts up like usual. What used to be usual. Anyway, I take it all as a good sign and drop off to sleep at last.
But when my eyes open the next morning, the light’s all wrong, much too clear and dark and blue. And the barbell’s back. I don’t even have to move to know it.
I check the time, smacking the button that lights up the LED display like it’s a crocodile I’m boppin’ on the nose.
It’s 8PM.
My shift was over two hours ago. That’s right, folks! Your ol’ buddy Ray up and slept through his shift for the second time this year without so much as a twitch at his morning alarm, and it’ll be beddy-bye time in just two hours, and no way to contact the regional manager until tomorrow morning.
There are creaks above me. I look up.
Footsteps.
Whoever’s up there...is home…
“I gotta fix this!” I say to myself. I have to heft the barbell along with me as I roll out of bed, but I gotta fix this.
I gotta.
I shower, throw on normal clothes, decide I’m not hungry, ride the elevator up one floor. I pretend I’m on my floor and make like I’m going to my apartment. Gotta b
e the easiest way to figure out who lives above me, right?
Wrong. ’cuz you and I both forgot this building was built by an architect with too many diplomas and not enough sense, so the hallway doesn’t follow the layout of the floor below, doesn’t even bend right, or maybe it bends too much, staggering left and right ’til my barbell-beaten brain is all turned around and I’ve got no sense of what might be below my feet.
I reach the end of the dim hall. There’s one window, a square at the end. The streetlamps have come on, but the sky is still mountain blue—but darkening quickly. The buildings outside are turning into purple shadows.
No way does my apartment stick out all the way out there. It’s gotta be back a ways.
I turn around.
Standing around both sides of me are doors. They’re all alike, a sort of scabby brown-red, with brass numbers next to them. No doorbells. No one’s come out or gone in any of ’em since I came up here.
I haul my feet in front of the apartment door closest to the window. I raise my fist to knock.
That’s when the barbell hits me full on. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, sounds wiser than to canvass this whole floor, get to the bottom of the broken fridge mystery, then maybe punch out that jackass’s lights.
But when pure exhaustion dumps into your brain it’s like…irresistible. Adrenaline in reverse. I must obey—or I’ll pay for it, like I’ve said.
I lower my raised fist and turn away from the dimming sky in the window. The racket’s never started this early.
I sludge my way back to my room. If I hurry, maybe I can get some sleep. If I’m lucky, the racket won’t happen tonight. If I’m smart, I’ll knock on every one of those doors I passed by and get this thing straightened away, one way or another.
* * *
The barbell punishes me again with a couple solid hours of hellbrain on the dreadmill…but there’s no racket that night.
I wake up famished, have to make do with polishing off a box of Cheerios in a bowl of shallow milk. I finish just in time for my flip phone to ring. I don’t know the number, but the Cheerios in my gut turn to tiny lead inner-tubes anyway. I know who this is.
I answer the phone.
“Ray here.”
“Mr. Ray? It’s Audell from the pretzel shop.”
Audell. Black kid. Real nice, lady-killer smile. Not who I thought.
“Yeah? Hey, how you doing?”
“Fine. Listen, just wanted to let you know the RM’s here.”
“You’re not at work?” I revise my mental picture.
“Just about to go in. You know I do like you—get changed just before—he didn’t see me walking by. Just wanted you to know.”
“Thanks, Audell.” I’d have to treat him somehow. Thank him for a good tip. “Were you in yesterday?”
“Yeah, but it was after the rush. I guess Winnie really stepped up to the plate, but some of the others called in sick, and she couldn’t get a hold of you, so she was still shorthanded. I’m sorry, Mr. Ray.”
I rubbed my eye with my free fist. “For what? You didn’t do nothing. Now go get clocked in before you’re late.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hang up. Immediately after, seven missed-call notificatinos make my phone buzz in my hand. I grunt, bewildered.
First my sound box, now my phone’s messed up, too? I didn’t get any messages yesterday or this morning.
Something’s going on here.
* * *
Nothing like arguing with your superior while you wear puffy sleeves in a getup chosen by an Easter-pastel-enamored circus clown.
Of course, the regional manager gets to wear street clothes—and of course none of the kids here today were there with Winnie yesterday.
“This is bad, Belga.”
No kidding, sleazebag.
He goes on. “Company records show this is the third time you’ve been a no-show in the past six months.”
“WHAT?!”
A tray clatters onto the stainless steel counters. This company’s too cheap to have a break room—they don’t hire any counter workers full time, either—and rather than ream me out in the food court out of sight of my kids, like a civil bloodsucker, the RM’s taking me to task right here in the back, in earshot of customers, even!
I lower my voice so I don’t distract my kids anymore. “No, no, this—I know it happened once before, but it was only once!”
“Not according to corporate’s timecards. You are aware when you clock in, it’s recorded in our cloud?”
Cloud, home office—it’s not like I keep a diary, so how can I disprove it? My word against their records. But what’s scary is…ever since the barbell showed up, I’m not as sharp as I used to be. So it’s possible this really is my third strike, and that I completely spaced the second one.
Without this job, I can’t make my rent.
I could lose my home.
I catch Audell looking. I turn so he can’t see my face and pitch my voice even lower. A voice that used to make million-dollar deals.
“You gonna fire me?” I ask the RM.
“Three no-shows, and you’re subject to termination, Mr. Belga. It’s company policy.” He doesn’t lower his voice at all, and that’s the thing that makes me most want to rip the arms off my stupid uniform and throw them in his face, along with a hearty I QUIT.
My palm’s right on the meaty part of my shoulder. But before I bunch the puffy sleeve into my fist, Audell’s there.
“Give him one more chance.”
“What, sonnn…young man?” The RM corrects himself quickly, but Audell doesn’t even flinch.
“You never had a phone alarm glitch on you? Once my phone updated in the middle of a study group and my alarm never went off. Without it, I totally spaced work. But Mr. Ray just said, ‘Don’t let it happen again,’ and I haven’t.”
“Young man, this is his third offens—time—”
“And he’s real good with the customers. I was here under the last manager, Ms. Isonbee. She got in a fistfight with a customer once, in front of two li’l kids in strollers. Mr. Ray’d throw himself under a bus before he let that happen. So don’t”—he glances at me—“throw him away, just ’cuz of a mistake he made when he wasn’t feelin’ well.”
The kids have posted a lookout, facing towards the mall, back straight as a mongoose’s, ready for customers. But the rest of the kids are standing behind Audell, nodding their heads.
I smooth out my sleeve before lowering my hand.
The RM looks over them all. He doesn’t say anything, and neither do they. Me, I’m twisted in six different directions, proud of my kids, scared for ’em, worried for me, hating this RM but knowing my fate depends on him…
The RM turns to me. Giving his back to the kids doesn’t seem like a good sign. But then he says, “Since you don’t remember the second incident, I will not look into it. But be advised, Mr. Belga: if there is another no-show, I will follow through on company policy.”
* * *
I ride the elevator up to the floor above mine. Now I have to canvass the apartments. I have to make this stop. It’s less about keeping my job now—or even my home—than living up to my kids’ opinion of me.
But I also have to pace myself. Right after work I put in a second alarm on my flip phone, then left a note on my canyon to set an alarm on the oven clock, the only other alarm in my apartment I could set hours in advance.
Can’t have the barbell running the show. Not anymore. Hence, the pacing.
I go to the square window and start knockin’ on doors. I’ve got a checklist with me. I filled in the apartment numbers on one side of my little notepad, left a column on the other side for my notes, like the old door-to-door days when I used to sell storm windows. I’ll know which doors I knocked on, and which ones got answered by somebody.
I start at the first door nearest the square window, working my way back t
o the elevator. I’ve given myself a time limit—one hour, from six thirty to seven thirty. Prime dinner hour. People should be home on a weeknight.
Half my list are no-shows, ’til I run down a lady coming back from the market, plastic bags makin’ red rings where they hang off her fingers, keys jangling as she thumbs through ’em with her free hand.
I say “run down” but I’m no dummy. I stop three doors away. “’Scuze me, miss?”
She shoots me a don’t mess with me look and I see her mentally considering whether or not to turn her keys into brass knuckles. Spatially, I think her room is too far inward to be aligned above mine, but she’s the only person I’ve seen tonight, so I gotta ask.
I hold up my hands, I come in peace. “Listen, I live here a floor below you, and I’m hearin’ grinding noises at night—like a busted fridge. You know anybody on this floor having problems like that?”
Her brow lowers, slow, cautious. “Can’t say that I do. Sorry.” Her voice ain’t sorry.
I grab a quick glance at her apartment number, thank her, then retreat down the hall back the way I came. I make my notes out of her sight. The last thing I need is to be reported, not when I still have so much of the floor left.
When I mince back out later, all signs of the grocery woman have vanished. I keep knocking on doors. But not a one of ’em answers before my hour’s up.
I go back to my place and collapse into bed. But the paper note I left myself pokes me in the back and I get up and set the oven alarm.
Gotta get up. On time.
The stress of the day turns the barbell to lead and I knacker out completely—until my white noise machine decides to crap out on me. And of course around then the fridge upstairs starts up again.
Once the chugging stops a million years later, I manage an hour of sleep before my alarms go off. I shower, make it to work on time.
I survive the shift.
I catch Winnie on her way in, force her to take the five dollars of lunch money I didn’t use that day. She tries to decline it—she’s bein’ polite—“Oh, no, Mr. Ray, I can’t, it’s your money!”—but she takes it in the end after I tell her I owe her a whole lot more than that, and if she don’t take this five bucks now, I’ll have to give her fifty later.
The Girlfriend Who Wasn't from Delaware Page 3