by Dan Lopez
She flushes and moves to the sink, brushes her teeth, gargles, spits. Dries her hands. She’ll need Alex’s help with the shutters. That’s the sticking point. Downstairs she can handle, but she doesn’t like climbing ladders so her bedroom window presents a challenge.
Alex.
Hers is not a large place. It’s small, actually: a one-bedroom town house with a whisper of a screened-in patio. But it’s hers and it’s enough for one person. That’s the problem, she thinks. It’s not one person anymore. Not with Alex crashing on her couch. Indefinitely, Laila reminds herself. Two months in and the arrangement still irks her. “Please, mi’ja, it’ll be just for a while,” Alex’s mother, Esther, had insisted over the phone while Alex pressed in beside Laila, shouting obscenities at the phone. A hastily packed duffel bag slumped at his feet. Things at the ancestral home have degraded. That’s how Alex put it when she persuaded him to calm down and present his side. “He doesn’t listen!” Esther interrupted, prompting Laila to take the call off speakerphone. “I don’t know what to do. If your father were here—” Tears prevented her from continuing. Laila didn’t so much relent as embrace the inevitability—Alex was standing in her living room, after all. She weakly mustered the strength to ask: “How long is a while?” She’d wanted to add that she had her own life and that she liked it just the way that it was, but between her brother and her stepmother, the family hardly needed another diva. For the sake of harmony she held her tongue. “I don’t know,” Esther said. “Just until he settles down.”
She’d been through this before and the parallel is not lost on her: a decade as an only child, the doted upon pride of a small, well-to-do family. The role suited her. It was enough. It was quiet. She had her routines, a life with room enough for a mother, a father, and her. Then her parents divorced. Her father married Esther soon after. Then Alex came and crowded things. Seventeen years later he’s doing it again.
She sighs, steeling herself against the chaos reigning beyond her bedroom door, her inviolable sanctuary. (Meaning off-limits to you.) Downstairs she expects to find a trail of discarded fast-food containers, their contents half consumed, littered across every surface from the kitchen counter to the couch, where her brother’s thin, naked body will be sprawled, long limbs reaching like a spider’s across the balled-up sheets of his ruined web while a snore bubbles his parted lips. (“Coño, Alex! I don’t wanna see your dick, man.” Was it too much to ask that he put on a pair of underwear at least? “Yo, why not? It’s a nice dick.” She finds herself smiling at the memory. How is it that Alex always manages to make her smile, even when he’s being a little shit?)
But instead of that, when Laila descends the stairs she’s greeted by silence.
Silence and a long shaft of sunlight scorching through the half-moon window above the sliding glass door leading out to the patio. The light traverses an impeccable interior before resting on a tidy couch where Alex should be. In his place, she finds folded sheets and neatly stacked pillows. How is it possible? She remembers seeing her brother when she got home last night after inventory. Somewhere around two A.M. she navigated the collateral damage of his late adolescence, guided only by the amber glow of streetlight filtering in through the blinds. Alex had been asleep, and not wanting to disturb him—and, let’s be honest, she was exhausted, little more than a withered twig in a lab coat after twelve hours on her feet—she silently grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and an oatmeal cookie sandwich from the pantry, before retiring to her room, pausing to kiss her brother on the forehead. “Good night, papo,” she whispered. He had been home. She saw him. Didn’t she?
“Alex?” She sniffs the top pillow and lurches. It’s damp and redolent with a tangy mix of sweat, grease, and musk—the sharp scent of teenage boys. He definitely spent the night. “You home?”
No answer.
Though there are few places to hide, she checks them all. The half bath in the foyer is vacant. The kitchen empty. The patio undisturbed.
He must’ve gone out. But this early? And where? And why? Alex is not one to rise before noon for any reason. She can recall only one instance in which he got up in the A.M. without a lot of hassle: the morning of their father’s funeral. But that was an exception, one she prefers to not dwell on.
She checks her phone to see if there’s something in the long list of notifications she ignored. Sure enough, a text: going out. No further details. She counts herself lucky that he bothered sending that much. Esther never got even that small courtesy when he ran out on her, and now she’s persona non grata after sending him to live with his sister—like that’s some great punishment. If anybody should be pissed at Esther it’s not Alex.
The time stamp on the message reads 8:30. Something is definitely up. What does he have to do at 8:30 in the morning? It’s not like he has a job. She opts for the light touch when texting him back.
Cool come home early k? Need ur help with the shutters luv u
She might get into it with him tonight, explain (again!) the importance of letting her know where he’s going to be and impressing upon him the merits of basic civility toward those who love and care about you...
But today is her day off and she’s determined to keep it for herself. She will waste no more energy on worrying about her selfish brother. It’s a quarter after ten and the only thing she wants right now is coffee!
THE FROG-CROAK SOUND OF DUCT TAPE TEARING JOLTS him awake.
An army moves around him. Men go in and out of the house, shouting at one another to mind plants and to tend to various pieces of equipment arranged throughout the limestone patio. Some climb onto the roof, where they stitch together heavy yellow tarps with rows of alligator clips, while others feed a tube under the tarp and test seals. Overnight, his sedate home has transformed into a midway abuzz with activity.
Cheryl hands him his coffee. “Here. Drink,” she says, her voice stripped of whatever softness it possessed the night before.
“The doll?” he asks, clearing his throat and wiping the sleep from his eyes. His pipe, long extinguished, rests on the hard bubble of his gut. His entire body aches.
“In the car with our suitcases.” She stashes the pipe in its usual place. “They’re just about done. We should get going.” She helps him to his feet. “You’re sweating. I told you to come in last night. Now you don’t even have time to change.”
“I’m fine. Never better. Feel like a million bucks.” He stretches himself like an elm scratching at the sky and stomps his feet to get the blood circulating. He shakes his body like an earthquake, rolls his neck, windmills his arms, and cracks his back. And in one bearish gulp he empties the coffee mug, announcing his satisfaction with a yawp.
The foreman peeks out from beneath the tarp. “Hey, lady. We’re about to close ’er up. If you forgot anything, now’s the time to get it.”
“No. Go ahead,” she calls back.
But before he can duck inside, Thaddeus beckons him. “Just a few questions!”
Thaddeus turns to Cheryl, who busies herself returning the lounge chairs to their original positions, mumbling something about UV and sun bleaching. “Do you have the doll?” he asks again.
She sighs. “In the car. Along with our suitcases.”
The foreman waddles over, tossing a glance at his loitering crew. He checks something on his phone, then looks up at Thaddeus. “I went over all of this with your wife. What do you need?”
For a long time Thaddeus doesn’t speak, only stares at the yard.
“Hey, guy, you got a question or what?” The foreman squints in the early-morning sun. He’s a large man, and already a tributary of sweat marks the valley of his spine. He smells of mulch and high-en-durance deodorant. “Yours ain’t the only house we got today. Ain’t even the only one we got in this neighborhood. You’d be surprised what bad shape a lot of these old houses are in.”
Thaddeus purses his lips. “How long until we can use the pool?”
He shrugs. “Should be fine now, unless
it’s broke. We only do the inside. Inside.” He points at the house for emphasis. “Look, I left a pamphlet with your wife—”
“This pool,” Thaddeus says. He wraps an arm around the foreman’s shoulders and drags him along the perimeter. “The contractor—a good-looking lady-contractor, couldn’t have been more than twenty-five—she wanted to charge twenty thousand for it. Do you know what I told her?” He grins, awaiting a response.
“Look, we really need to get started here—”
“I said, ‘No way, Josephina!’ Ha!” He taps the foreman’s chest. “I could do the job myself for half that if I knew about construction.”
“Yeah? Good for you. Like I said, I gave your wife the rundown. Just avoid goin’ inside and you’ll be good—”
“‘Materials alone are going to run twelve grand.’ That’s what she told me.” Thaddeus narrows his eyes. “Okay, so I told her I could go as high as fourteen thousand. Hey, two grand’s just a weekend in Vegas anyway, right? But it wasn’t enough. ‘I have my crew to think about,’ she said. We went back and forth for twenty minutes. I don’t have to tell you about negotiating.” He gives the foreman a knowing nod. “Finally I said, ‘Fifteen thousand. That’s my final offer,’ and showed her the door. And what do you think she did?”
The foreman glances back to his crew and motions for them to seal the house.
“She said, ‘You drive a hard bargain.’ But she took the job. I liked her style, so I said, ‘What the hell, with the five grand I’m saving I’ll start a scholarship to help more girls like you go to trade school.’ I can’t help it; I’m a feminist. When the job was done I gave her an extra two hundred bucks for her trouble. No big deal.”
The foreman slips away, and moments later a quiet hiss signals that the gas has begun to fill the house.
“Let’s go,” Cheryl says.
But the limp tent sputtering to life transfixes Thaddeus. It morphs and undulates like a lava flow. Forms rise in the fabric only to collapse as the gas reaches toward equilibrium. “It’s just the wind,” Cheryl says, but he ignores her. His home is turmoil. Right now poison pours over Cheryl’s clothes and into Stevie’s old room. Next will be the garage, or would that have been first? Ultimately, the order matters little to him. Gas will eventually coil around everything like a cat setting down for a nap: his law books in the attic, the photograph in the family room of Stevie leaning over the rail at Niagara Falls pretending to slip, the Hawaiian leis from a family vacation he can’t quite remember, entire drawers full of odd knickknacks and fading memorabilia that attest to a life well lived, tangible proof of memories made even if the memories themselves rise more sluggishly and infrequently than they used to—all of it, ultimately, choking on gas. But how many of the termites?
He stays awhile longer, watching the tent. Then with a cough he turns to Cheryl. “They’ll do a great job,” he says. He knows that they’ll go above and beyond because he took the time to build a rapport with the man in charge. And in business, as in life, it’s the relationships that matter. “A fine job,” he says. “No problem.”
Cheryl looks down at her nails and taps her foot. “Can we go now?”
“Whatever you want, heart of my heart.”
Taking her hand, he kisses her on the knuckles, but the static charge has barely left her skin before, wide-eyed, she yanks her hand away.
“I may have accidentally touched the poison,” she whispers, half apologizing.
Orlando feels like an extension of Apopka. Or maybe it’s the other way around. A mall looms in the distance, and before that a multiplex cradled by a handful of shops. But mostly the streets are wide and residential. If a difference exists between the neighboring cities at all it’s in the way faux-Spanish architecture dresses up the vernacular of simple midcentury bungalows in Orlando to a greater degree than it does in Apopka. Thaddeus is having a hard time navigating it. It’s been years since he’s been in the suburbs beyond downtown.
“Lot of new construction,” he says.
“Uh-huh,” Cheryl says. “You’re going to want to make a left at the light. It’s the one with the waterfall.”
He maneuvers into a turning lane, dutifully engages his directional signal, and waits. Traffic roils from the horizon like salmon on run. In Apopka traffic’s not so bad, or maybe it is and he’s simply accustomed to it. (The streets by their house, at least, are familiar.) An oasis pools in the middle distance. A final car swims through a long yellow light, then Thaddeus proceeds, on Cheryl’s direction, passing smoothly through a portal of blue tile and lacquered calligraphy spelling out the name PALM FALLS WEST. At the end of a long drive flanked by hedges and iron lattices stands a security kiosk, built with unassuming white concrete that could just as easily be calcified runoff from the eponymous waterfall.
“Gated community.” He whistles. “You didn’t tell me they lived in a gated community.”
“Yes, I did.” She removes her sunglasses and places them in her purse. “All the new ones are gated.”
“I would’ve remembered something like that.”
“What do you want from me? I told you.”
The white gate opens before they reach the kiosk, but he stops the car and lowers his window anyway. “Good morning!”
A guard leans out of the kiosk. “You can go right on through, sir,” he says. His uniform appears freshly bleached, the epaulets newly stitched. Even bent over, the polyester holds its crease. He waves at Cheryl. “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Bloom.”
Cheryl returns the gesture. “Hello, Byron.”
Her smile is bright, boarding on flirtatious, and Thaddeus wonders if he should be worried. He’ll have to look into that later, but right now there’s work to be done.
“We’re visiting my son, Stevie, and his partner for the week,” Thaddeus says. “Do you need me to sign anything?”
“No need, sir.” Byron smiles. “Mrs. Bloom is on the list. You can go right in.”
“I’ll sign whatever you need.”
“He said it’s fine,” Cheryl snipes, maintaining a pained smile.
“Just so everything’s on the up and up. I know how gated communities can be.”
“Thaddeus, let’s go.”
He relents, raising his hands in surrender. “Hey, man, okay. She’s the boss. I just do what she tells me to.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep up the good work, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Have a nice visit.”
Thaddeus reaches for his wallet, but Cheryl stays his hand and gives the guard a quick wave. “Thank you, Byron. Thaddeus, drive.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
The immediate interior of the complex houses a cabana and a modest pool. From there the layout quickly segues into a series of winding lanes and sidewalks. Some end in culs-de-sac; others skirt roundabouts and branch off into labyrinthine blocks with plenty of meandering green space. The homes are all two-story off-white units with trim in peach, seafoam, or light gray. A few look freshly painted, others recently pressure-washed. A traffic sign reminds motorists to be vigilant of children at play. The overall impression is of something clean and new. “Some place,” he says.
Just being here seems to have elevated Cheryl’s mood. As soon as they turn the corner—or, rather, slalom along a lazy curve—she spots the house and taps him on the arm, pointing it out. He’s happy for the contact, even if it’s fleeting. “Here we are! Just pull into the driveway.”
Uniform rows of violet and white perennials adorn the bottom of the house. Pagoda lights trim the front walkway, and stacked river rocks create a neutral border between the saturated green of the grass and the robust brown of the wood chips piled high throughout the flower beds. A juvenile oak sprouts from the center of the lawn.
“Some yard. Must be making the gardener rich.”
“Oh, the homeowners’ association probably takes care of it.” She flutters out of the car.
“Homeowners, huh?”
He shifts the car into park and steps
out with a wince. These days driving always puts a crick in his knee, and sleeping outside last night didn’t do him any favors. He bends the knee until the pain recedes, then hobbles around the driveway.
She extracts a handful of letters from the mailbox. “Peter’s still at work, but Steven said to just let ourselves in.” She hands him the mail to hold while she goes around the side of the house. Lazily, he flips through the stack: a few bills and a catalog from a furniture store he doesn’t recognize, that’s pretty much it.
“Stevie’s not here?”
“He’s at the real estate office all day, then doing his volunteering. I told you all this already.”
“Oh.”
“He’ll be home later.” Then speaking to herself: “There’s a key hidden over here somewhere.”
After getting the bags from the trunk, he wanders over the lawn. It’s softer than what they have in Apopka, which is stubby, coarse, and often yellow in the winter. This grass, by contrast, is almost blue.
“Some lawn,” he mumbles.
Cheryl returns, holding up a key and smiling. “Found it!” She kisses him on the cheek. “Come on, quit staring at the lawn and grab the suitcases. I have to disarm the alarm and I never remember the code. Oh, I’m so excited!”
“Oh”—the kiss still warm on his cheek—“I’ll come all right!”
Palm trees line the deck of Stevie’s house, barks painted white against insects. Cheryl is upstairs while he paces aimlessly; dusk can be the loneliest time of day. She’d grabbed him as soon as he dropped their bags in the guest room, needing him for the first time in months. “Do you want anything special?” he’d asked, unsure how to proceed after such a long absence. She hadn’t deigned to answer, leaving little for him to go on but a cryptic shrug. He didn’t press her further; instead, he improvised, and they had a magnificent time.