Crystal, her spirits lightening, begins singing as she resumes dusting. But down below on the stoop, four pairs of eyes are staring up at a fat man who’s smiling back at them.
Then, suddenly, Jackman catches himself as he jerks backward. He blinks at the sense of acceleration. Trying to stand, he’s dizzied by earth rolling beneath his feet. “Jeez, sorry,” he manages to say as Ajeno catches his arm. “I must’ve spaced out there for just a sec. What did you say?”
“Just how we got to work together. That’s all.”
Sam rises unsteadily to his own feet with a small grunt. “You can count on me.” Turning, he grips Muriel’s hands, popping the old lady to her feet.
She smiles brightly at Ajeno. “A very good meeting, dear. Short, but with real consensus.” Then, with a ladylike inhalation, she taps Sam on the arm, her gaze direct for once. “I’ve got a casserole in the oven. Enough to share if you want some.”
“Share what—charcoal?” He points up at the open window of her second-floor apartment, now emitting whiffs of smoke.
She protests, “But I just put it in ten minutes ago!”
He ushers her quickly up the steps. “No worries, I’ve eaten plenty of charcoal in my day.”
Ajeno rocks back and forth on his heels as sounds of a camera’s shutter closing repeatedly clicks from one of the cars lined up across the street. “I gotta go now, ’kay? My shift starts in ten minutes.”
“Sure,” answers Jackman. “I’ll take care of Miss Sally.” He turns to face the bag lady still sitting on the stoop. “You okay, Miss Sally?”
She nods, looking around with new interest. Her doughy white hand lifts to wave at the man in a powder-blue suit who’s climbed out of his car to stare.
Noah adds, “You want me to walk you home?”
“I like it here,” she says. “Can we stay?”
Taken aback, he shrugs. “Sure, whatever you want. I stay out here most nights, you know. At least, until nine . . .” He looks across the street to the digital clock outside the bank. Puzzled, Noah frowns. “That can’t be right.” He does a double take when glancing at his watch. Cursing under his breath, he awkwardly presses buttons on the watch to realign its readout with the digital counter. “Strange.”
***
Mom’s Diner is not yet open for the after-supper rush. But already, a long line of hungry workers stand, waiting outside the glass door.
Ruiz exchanges a look with Jones. Pointedly, he lifts his chin, indicating the dark faces, hungry and exhausted, peering inside. The manager answers by waving dismissively. His eyes drop again to the Harley-Davidson magazine. “Ah, let ’em wait. Ajeno’s not even here yet.”
The Mexican looks back at the faces. Then, scooping the key ring from the counter, he goes to unlock the door. “I can cook until the fat one comes.”
Jones barely hears him. Little grunts escape him as he contemplates the curves of a pair of dual chrome headlights. It’s only with the press of bodies streaming inside the small space that he finally snaps out of his motorcycle fantasy. He throws up his hands. “Hey! Then who’s gonna handle the cash register? Tell me that!”
***
It’s just past eleven o’clock when Crystal becomes aware of noise outside the door of her apartment. Shouts, jumbled words, glass breaking. The volume startles her. How long has the noise been going on? She doesn’t know, so lost in thought has she been about Ajeno.
“Stop manhandling her!” yells someone loud enough that even the girl, in her reverie, hears it.
“Eliza?” she queries while opening the apartment door. Two men in white lab coats are forcing Beth into a straightjacket. Crystal limps forward, horrified. “What’s happening?”
“I’m getting my life back!” Rosie Newman, bleary-eyed, looks exhausted. She’s collapsed against the wall. “This crazy lady’s kept me up for three nights straight, talking to herself, throwing stuff, moving furniture around her apartment. I tell you, if I don’t get sleep soon, I’m gonna lose it. Just completely lose—”
The men in the lab coats turn to study her appraisingly.
Rosie sticks her face into theirs defensively. “I would be cranky, okay?!”
Fastening the last buckles on the jacket, the men glance at each other. Their hidden communication sends Rosie backing belligerently down the hallway. She disappears into her own apartment, but not without a final scream: “And keep it down when you’re dragging her out—okay?!”
Crystal steps up to put an arm around a shaking Beth. Calmly, she asks one of the men, “Why have you restrained my friend?”
“She’s off her meds.” He holds up what looks like a digital thermometer. “Blood analysis shows a deficit of at least two weeks. We have an ambulance down at the curb. Gotta take her in before she becomes a danger.” Pulling another digital device from his pocket, he appears to make notes as the other man, taking a few steps down the hallway, notes the number of Rosie’s apartment. He nods significantly to the first man as both return to typing into handheld devices.
“Beth,” whispers the girl, “is that you or Eliza?”
“It’s me, dear.” The old woman is trying to keep her lips from trembling. “I just thought . . . ”
“What? What did you think, Beth?”
The wrinkled eyes dart fearfully between the two men. “I thought without the meds I could find myself again. I can’t remember things like I used to, and I did so want to be healthy for your wedding.”
“How did I not notice this?” Crystal rushes to apologize, “Beth, I’m so sorry! But are you saying that you went off the meds . . . for me?”
“For us,” confesses the old woman in a rush. “For all of us.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her eyes losing focus, Beth’s mutter raises the hair on the back of Crystal’s neck. “Adam begat Abel. Cell begetting cell. Molecules dividing . . .”
“Beth!” Crystal tugs at the woman’s jacket. “What are you talking about?”
The old woman’s gaze clears, and again she looks at the girl. “Separation, dear. I suddenly realized it all has to do with separation. And then I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Knew that if I let Eliza and Lizzie out, then maybe we could . . .” She searches for a word while screwing up her wrinkles. “Reconnect. Turn us back into me, and then my memory would get better.” Her smile turns beatific. “That’s all any of us really want, isn’t it? To reunite?” She directs a nod at the girl. “Isn’t that why you’re getting married?”
“Don’t mind the crazy talk, ma’am.” The man who wrote down Rosie’s apartment number wheels the stretcher closer. “She’ll be more coherent once back on her meds.” The other man slips between the girl and the straightjacketed woman.
Beth’s voice continues urgently, “So that you and Ajeno can speak with one voice?”
“Upsy-daisy,” chorus the men. On either side of the old woman, they’ve grabbed hold of jacket handles, lifting her, with a slight bounce, up onto the stretcher.
“Gotta lie down, ma’am. We need to strap you in for transport.”
Beth, biting her lip, nods reluctantly. She reclines. Then, with the clicking of more buckles, the two men rattle the old lady on the stretcher in the direction of the service elevator.
“Don’t forget, dear,” floats a wavering voice, “it’s all about reintegration. Undoing the original mistake. Don’t forget!”
“I won’t, Beth.” Crystal wipes tears from her cheeks. “Trust me.”
Chapter Eleven
The next afternoon moves slowly, at least at Mom’s Diner on Tenth. Jones, leaning up against the cash register, flirts with his bloodless-looking blond girlfriend while Ruiz carries a tub of freshly filled ketchup bottles to the front of the nearly empty diner. There are only two customers. And they are stuck off in the corner, sleeping while sitting up in front of steaming plates of spaghetti. The tall man begins to distribute one bottle to each table. The plastic tub is emptied of bottles quickly.
“Okay, baby,” purrs the blonde, “I’ll meet ya at the hotel at six. Hope you’ve remembered to pack . . .,” she smiles provocatively, “everything.”
Wolfishly, Jones grins. “Only the essentials.” He pops open the cash register as Ruiz places the plastic tub on an empty chair.
Laughing, the anemic blonde, barely glancing at Ruiz, makes for the door, balancing on her high heels and smirking. The shoes are cheap, though, and they slip on the floor, which is dampened by the day’s grease. The blonde cries out. Without thinking, Ruiz reaches out to grab her arm. Her eyes open very wide as she steadies herself. “Oh my God, that was scary. I could’ve broken my ass if you hadn’t caught me!”
Coarsely, from across the room, Jones laughs. “Can’t have that—least not yet.”
“It’s not funny, Tommy. I coulda been hurt bad.” The manager waves her off dismissively as he disappears into his office to count the day’s receipts. She flutters a hand briefly in Ruiz’s direction. “I really do ’preciate it,” she says awkwardly. “Thanks.”
Ruiz shrugs off the incident. “De nada.” Retrieving the plastic tub, he makes for the shadowy rear of the diner as the bell over the front door tinkles distantly with the blonde’s exit.
“Psst!”
He jerks around, his hand flying to the counter’s knife rack. But it’s only the face of the crack whore that’s bobbing through the open doorway leading out to the back alley. “Psst,” she hisses again. “We gotta talk.”
Roughly, he pushes her through the doorway until they both stand outside in the narrow passage. “Why have you come?” he asks angrily. A glance at the sleeping baby in her arms only adds to his ire. “You bring the child here?”
“Well, yeah. I couldn’t leave it by itself at that rooming house, could I?”
Ruiz refuses to be reasonable. “You were to stay at the rooming house. This is what I pay you for. Why then are you here?”
“I gotta work,” she whines, shoving the baby into his arms.
“You are already working.” He thrusts the baby back into her arms. “You are working for me.”
“Yeah? Well, you’re not chipping in for benefits, are you? My cleaning job pays for both health and dental. Plus, I ain’t got,” she heaves the baby at him, her expression defiant, “to change no . . . dirty . . . diapers! So here.”
Ruiz fumes. The child, now beginning to wake, is dangling from his hands. He shoots a number of glances into the crack whore’s spine as she stomps away down the alleyway.
“Hiya, Ricky, whatcha got there?” Ajeno, suddenly appearing, slaps a hand on Ruiz’s back as the latter flinches.
The Mexican whirls about, the baby’s legs flying helplessly in the air. “Here, you take it!” Pushing the blinking child into the fat man’s arms, he turns on his heel and marches back inside the diner.
“Huh.” Ajeno grins down into the baby’s face. “Howdy, little fella. You look kinda familiar.”
***
“How,” Crystal asks herself, “did I not see?” With Beth hauled away to the hospital, the girl is forced to take a good, hard look at herself. She sits down on the mattress in her apartment. Someone she loves has been in trouble for days, and somehow, she just didn’t notice. How did this happen? She doesn’t want to admit it, but her blindness with Beth reminds her of how she’d abandoned her parents, willfully turning away as they’d screamed for help.
“Water under the bridge,” she tells herself sternly. The important thing is to keep it from happening again. Prevention, she lectures herself, comes from identification. She must identify what’s been bothering her and keeping her distracted.
Well, she knows that her worries about Ajeno being her life partner have been more intense lately. Jealousy and insecurities have flared up a few times. But that’s only natural, isn’t it? Weddings always bring out insecurities. This she knows, but surely . . .
She shakes her head. No, there’s something else. Thoughts of the last few days circle in her head. Ah, that’s it! She remembers what Sally Howie said just a day or two ago. That Crystal doesn’t fit with Ajeno because he’s too big.
“Oh!” She jumps up from the mattress. Is this what it’s come to? Is she, like everyone else in Ajeno’s life, going to tell him that he’s too fat? “But I can’t do that. He’ll be crushed!” Her eyes fly around the room like panicked birds. Tension tightens her muscles.
She feels at the point of snapping, her whole body pinging before cracking wide open, when she sees it. Ajeno’s dear, sweet, round face. It stares back at her from a photo she’s taped to the fridge. As much as she loves this image, she loves the man more. And obviously the extra weight poses a health risk.
Could this be what’s been bothering her? Her knowledge of his danger struggling with her abhorrence at hurting his feelings? She sits down again on the mattress. It won’t be pretty, she tells herself, but it must be done.
***
“Hey, Ricky,” whispers Ajeno in a stage whisper past the alleyway door of Mom’s Diner. “What you want done with this?”
Ruiz pauses. He’s restocking the diner’s weekly supply of rat poison above the condiment shelf. Again in control of himself, he’s thinking. Sounds from the manager’s office suggest that Jones will soon be emerging. He looks quickly around. An overnight bag sits next to the counter, behind the register. It takes less than ten seconds for the tall man to empty Jones’s change of clothing and toiletries into a plastic bag. “Here,” he opens the now-empty bag for Ajeno. “Put it in here!”
“Okeydokey.” Gently, the fat man arranges the gurgling child inside. “Now what?”
“Now,” says Ruiz, “you leave to watch the child. I tell Jones that you are ill and cannot work.”
Ajeno nods. “Right, right.” He makes a half-turn before turning back. “How long you think, Ricky? I gotta get home for supper in a couple of hours. You want me to give the baby to Crystal? She can keep it if no one wants it.”
“No!” Ruiz throws up his hands. “Do not do this. It must go back to its parents . . . eventually. Just keep it hidden until I come for it, yes?”
“No problemo.” Turning his back again on Ruiz, Ajeno plods down the alley, chanting with no rhythm whatsoever, “Hush, little baby, don’t you cry. Ajeno’s gonna buy you a big fish pie, and if that big fish pie ain’t tasty, Ajeno’s gonna buy you a fat, sweet pastry . . .”
***
Agitated, John Doe leans back on the sofa in his hotel room. He’s spent the last few days fruitlessly running down leads. So far, nothing—zip, zero, zilch, nada. For a while, he had hopes of some fat guy working at a diner down on Tenth. But the latest FRC theft cleared him when the agent tailing him provided him an alibi.
Doe’s already tired of this Dayville, USA. Not only can he not find the operative, but now, freakishly, he’s got a whole team of agents in the hospital from motorcycle-incurred injuries. He rubs a hand over his eyes. Why, he wonders, can’t this job be over already? He’s so bored he could cry, and it doesn’t help imagining what Dayville used to be like.
“Penny for your thoughts,” says someone softly. His eyes fly open as Agent Gracie Stevens hands him a steaming latte before dropping down to sit on the cushion beside him. “So, talk to me,” she inquires, “what’s got you as fidgety as a cat walking up tin?”
“Fidgety?” He observes her over the rim of the paper coffee cup. “Haven’t the faintest what you mean. Not popping those happy pills again, are you?” She gives him the look and stays quiet as he chugs down the entirety of the coffee drink.
Wiping his lips clean of milk foam, he finally though relents as he sees her gaze still on him. “Okay, fidgety isn’t exactly accurate. I feel more . . . restless.” He circles a polished fingernail in the air. “It’s this place—Dayville, I mean. It used to be famous in certain echelons of the federal structure.”
Agent Stevens looks doubtful. “Famous? This place? It’s a dump.”
“Now,” he corrects while retrieving his needles and yarn fr
om their canvas bag, “now it’s a dump, but yesterday, no—not a dump. Not at all!”
“So, what was it?”
Bunching his lips together, Doe stares for a moment at the ceiling before his lungs deflate. “Okay, look, I’m not supposed to tell anyone. They only let me read the file cause we were being sent here. So, this is strictly just between me and thee—right?” When, suspiciously, she nods, he tells the story. A story so full of crashed spacecrafts, alien pilots, and 1960s government experimentation that Agent Stevens finds it hard to believe.
Doe puts down his knitting to finish the tale, “I still get the jimjams thinking ’bout those old photos. The swollen corpses that...I swear they were floating! Something ‘bout not adapting to our gravity. Now I KNOW what you’re going to say - trick photography, right? But I don’t think so. I really don’t.”
He shoots her a curious look. “Jeez, can you imagine? What it must’ve been like back in those heady days of poor government oversight?” He shrugs dismissively. “I mean, before all their test subjects died, that is.”
“Huh?” Agent Stevens jumps, her thoughts having wandered. “Yeah, sure. I guess.”
“I tell you, those agents could get away with murder . . . I mean unauthorized murder.” His eyes widen covetously; a sheen of sweat coating his pale skin. “They could write their own ticket. They’d found something so . . . special that controlling it made ’em untouchable, like gods.”
“John?”
“Uh huh?”
She touches her chin. “You’ve got a little bit of spit coming out of your mouth. Yeah, there . . . no . . . to the left . . . that’s it.”
“Thanks.” He gives her an unpleasant smile before lowering his eyes again to the knots of yarn. “Ah, hell, now I’ve dropped a stitch!”
***
Crystal drops her last purchase onto the kitchen table. Hearing Ajeno’s key fumbling in the lock of their door, she takes a deep breath and stands in front of the table. It’s time. Time to confess. Time to tell Ajeno of her plan.
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