by Ronald Malfi
True.
He smoked.
After grabbing a bite at Bastian’s, he took a cab to Radio Shack where he bought some cheap videotape, and then to Nellie Worthridge’s apartment. If they were going to need to reschedule yesterday’s shoot (and he was positive that they would), he wanted to set everything up again without having to bother Kelly. Perhaps the project was adding to her stress. Maybe showing her those ruined tapes last night hadn’t been the best of ideas.
He stopped at the grocers and filled a plastic bag up with oranges. The old woman had a fetish for oranges and Josh did his best to support her habit. He liked the old woman: she was much more cheerful that the seven-hundred-pound woman with the plate of brownies. She had been depressing. Nellie, on the other hand, always managed to lift his spirits.
I can use some lifting today, he thought, walking up the risers to the old woman’s apartment. He had taken the elevator only once—the first time he and Kelly had been to see the old woman—and had decided upon the stairwell for each subsequent visit. Any display of lethargy made him feel somewhat guilty. After all, the old woman went through her life without any legs. Was he really going to bitch over a few flights of stairs?
He knocked several times on Nellie’s door. She rarely ever answered it, so he waited for the mandatory “Come in.” But it never came. He knocked a few more times and waited (this wasn’t unusual; the woman’s hearing was about as flawless as a country road). When she didn’t answer the second time he reached out and jiggled the doorknob. It turned and he cracked the door open and peeked his head inside.
“Nellie?”
The apartment looked empty. If not for Nellie’s old-fashioned phonograph slowly turning through a Duke Ellington album in the corner of the living room, he would have thought the old woman had stepped out.
He stepped inside and placed the plastic bag of fruit on the kitchen counter. There was a pot of boiling water on the stove. Something wasn’t right.
“Nellie? Hello?”
She might be in the bathroom, he rationalized. Even old ladies have to drop the kids off at the pool on occasion. And if she comes out now and sees me standing here in her kitchen, I might cause her to suffer a heart attack, the poor old thing.
But he didn’t convince himself. Something wasn’t right.
“Nellie? Where are you? Are you here?”
He moved across the living room just as Ellington ended one number and struck up another. As he peered down the hallway he expected to see the bathroom door closed, but it wasn’t. It was propped open halfway by Nellie’s overturned wheelchair. On the floor, half in the bathroom and half in the hallway, was the old woman. She lay there unmoving, and the first thought that blasted through Josh’s head was, She’s dead.
He rushed over to her, righting the wheelchair and pushing it out of the way. It clanged against the toilet. Bending down to the old woman’s chest, he could hear her rasping breath pushing in and out of her lungs, could hear her heart—faint, but still on the clock—beating within her chest. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was frozen open, pulled into a grim mockery of a smile. Dried laces of spit ran down the corners of her mouth and into the wrinkled grooves of her cheeks.
“Okay, Nellie,” he breathed, pulling himself to his feet and rushing for the nearest telephone, “you just hold on, all right? You just hold on.” He was whispering these words, but that didn’t matter; he didn’t think Nellie would be able to hear them, anyway. They were more for his comfort than hers.
He reached for the telephone on the kitchen counter, knocking the bag of oranges to the floor. The bag ripped open and the oranges fell out and rolled across the floor in different directions.
“Hang on, Nellie,” he whispered, and called for help.
It was a stroke and no one had any definite answers. Josh stayed with the old woman until she was stabilized, staring in at her through the glass-and-wire doorway of the ICU. She looked like a child in that bed, so small and seemingly at peace. He remembered her complaining about headaches during the shoot yesterday and now he wondered if that had been a signal of things to come. He didn’t know the first thing about strokes nor about what their symptoms included. And the way he’d found her, unconscious in the doorway to her bathroom at the end of the hall, her chair tipped on its side, those dried lines of spit tracing down her cheeks…he couldn’t shake the image.
Is that how we all go in the end? he wondered. Is it just a matter of time before we all get old and alone and die on the floor of our bathrooms, our chairs tipped over, dried spit on our face?
A young nurse with wide hips brushed by him.
“Will she be all right?” he asked her.
“We’ll be keeping a close eye on her,” the nurse said, smiling with a mouthful of teeth as she continued down the corridor.
That’s not what I asked, he thought, and turned away from the ICU. He walked down the hallway, the sodium ceiling lights making his shadow large and almost comical on the tile floor in front of him. There was a pay phone at the end of the corridor. He picked up the receiver, slipped thirty-five cents into the slot, and dialed Kelly’s number. As he stood listening to Kelly’s phone ring on the other end, he questioned whether or not he should say anything to Kelly at all about Nellie. Would this be the final thing to set her over the top? Would she perhaps discontinue with the project altogether? Surely he’d sensed Kelly’s recent lack of enthusiasm. Would she see Nellie’s stroke as an omen, as an excuse to finally put We the People to rest without ever completing it?
It doesn’t matter, he thought, because I won’t let her. This project is too good, too important, to simply cast aside when it becomes too difficult.
The phone continued to ring with no answer. He hung up the receiver before Kelly’s answering machine picked up and leaned back against the wall. His mind returned to Sampers, the Monster of Manhattan, and to the way the kid had looked in that split second when he pulled the trigger and fired the first of two shots at him. There had been an amalgam of conflicting emotions in the kid’s face—fear, anger, sadness, confusion.
You didn’t want to pull that trigger any more than I wanted to get shot, Joshua Cavey thought morosely.
It was an insane world.
Chapter Four
After leaving the hospital, Josh decided to stop by Kelly’s apartment and give her the bad news. He knocked once and the door was immediately pulled open. Kelly stood on the other side, her eyes red and puffy, her face more haggard than it had been in the past several weeks. Upon seeing her, Josh’s initial assumption was that she had already (for some reason) been notified about Nellie Worthridge’s stroke and had spent the afternoon crying. But no—that didn’t make sense.
His concern was quick to register in his voice. His words came out shaky and uncertain. “Kelly…what is it?”
She just shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Stepping aside, she motioned for him to come in. There was Tuvan music playing low on her stereo and no lights on in the apartment. The sweet, aromatic odor of sandalwood incense filled his nose. Without thinking, he reached out for her and placed a hand on one of her shoulders. He could feel her entire body tremble with each hitching breath she took.
“I’m sick,” she practically whispered, trying to cultivate a smile for him. With little emotion, she brushed his hand away, went over to the half-wall that separated the kitchen and the living area, and depressed the message button on her answering machine. Before the message even began, she was moving down the hallway and closing herself in the bathroom.
The machine beeped and the voice that came through the speaker was a man’s voice, quite stern and matter-of-fact. A down-to-business voice. Josh summoned a mental image of Christopher Walken, the movie actor—all stone-faced and expressionless.
“Miss Rich,” the stone-voice said, “my name is Jeffery Kildare, I handle your father’s personal agenda. I’m afraid it’s my duty to notify you of an unfortunate incident that has occurred here at the compound. Your siste
r Becky has come under some adverse circumstances. Plainly, Miss Rich, your sister was brutally attacked and nearly killed. Your father was adamant about contacting you. I have taken the liberty of securing you a plane ticket for tomorrow evening from JFK to Burlington International. You can pick up your ticket at the counter, and a driver will be at Burlington when your flight comes in to take you up to the compound. I apologize for the brevity of this message, but there is much to attend to here. Your parents look forward to your arrival.”
The machine beeped and clicked off. Josh just stood there in dumb silence, staring at the answering machine in an attempt to fully understand the severity of what he’d just heard. Christ, he hadn’t even known Kelly had a sister.
Becky, he thought, her name is Becky and she was brutally attacked and nearly killed.
He went to the closed bathroom door and rapped on it twice with his knuckles.
“Kell? Come on, kid, open the door, all right?”
He was anticipating an argument, but none came. Instead, Kelly opened the bathroom door and slipped out into the hallway, brushing past him as if he didn’t even exist. She walked with a purpose, moving fast. As if someone or something were chasing her.
“You all right?” he asked, following her into the living area. “You want to talk about this? I’m here.”
Not looking at him, she clicked off the music and removed selected art books from a shelf. She examined them absently before stacking each one on the smoked-glass coffee table between the bookshelf and the sofa. Josh watched her shoulders hitch several times as she struggled to keep herself under control. For the first time, he noticed how much weight she’d lost over the past month or so. Her arms appeared to float within the fabric of her pullover and her waist seemed trimmer. No, not trim—emaciated. Was she not eating too? First no sleep and now no food?
Finally, Kelly sat down on the sofa and folded her hands around her face. “I feel frozen,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” It was all that came to his mind, all he was able to spit out. Like some horrible actor on a pitiful made-for-television movie. “Do you need me to do anything for you?”
Kelly shook her head. She looked exhausted. “I need a drink.”
“What can I get?”
“There’s some Absolute in the cupboard above the fridge,” she said. “Grab some glasses, will you, please?”
He went around to the cupboard, fished out the bottle of vodka and two rocks glasses. “You want me to knock some orange juice in it?”
“Straight,” she said.
He filled two glasses. “What happened?” he asked, his back toward her.
“You heard the message, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Becky, right?”
Kelly’s voice from very far away: “Becky…” As if she were trying to remember the name herself.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s all you were told about what happened? You don’t have any other information about what happened other than that message on your machine?”
“That’s all.”
“Did you try calling your parents’ house?”
“I don’t exactly know the phone number anymore,” she practically whispered. It sounded like something was caught in her throat. A groan, maybe. She still sounded very far away. “If they even have a phone number…”
“That Kildare guy…who was that, anyway?”
“My father’s hands.” She sounded both dejected and partly amused at the same time. “A puppet. I don’t know. I’ve never met him. My father is a very wealthy man, Josh. He doesn’t need to do things on his own. He pays others to do those things for him.”
Josh handed her one of the glasses and sat down beside her on the sofa. He didn’t know how to proceed; this was uncharted territory. And the look on her face—that look frightened him. It went deeper than just the expected sorrow she was justified in feeling in the wake of her sister’s tragedy. This look had thought in it. Too much contemplation behind those eyes, too much lousy thinking.
“I felt this coming,” she spoke up suddenly, clutching her glass with both hands between her knees. “I mean, I felt something coming. I don’t know. It all just sounds crazy. I can’t even think straight right now.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I think…this sounds crazy, Josh, but I think something inside me has been expecting this. You know? Like how a mother just knows when something bad has happened to her child? It’s like that, I guess. I think that’s why I’ve been feeling this way…or maybe not…Jesus, I don’t know.”
“When does your flight leave?”
“Tonight. I should be at the airport no later than nine o’clock.”
“How long will you be staying there?”
Her eyes trailed off into space, unfocused and facing the far wall. “I don’t even know yet.” Then she faced Josh. She looked half-asleep and dreaming, lost in her own mind. “I haven’t seen my sister in years. I haven’t even been back to the compound in so long.” Surprisingly, she broke out into choked laughter. “Compound,” she muttered. “Sounds like a fucking military base. House. That’s all it is. Just a big fucking house.” She took a long drink from her glass.
Josh thought, Plainly, Miss Rich, your sister was brutally attacked and nearly killed.
“It’s such a cold place,” Kelly went on, “and I haven’t been there in years. My parents are not the warmest, fuzziest people, in case you didn’t catch that from the message on my answering machine. Thank you, Mr. Kildare, whoever the hell you are. You are my hero. Good luck and good-bye, Bobby Jean.”
“I’m sure your sister will be all right,” he said, realizing as soon as the words were out of his mouth just how ridiculous he sounded. “I mean…I’m sure if it was very serious your father—or this Kildare guy—would have left you more information. Or at least a phone number. I mean, I would think…”
She nodded, but Josh could tell she didn’t agree with him and he didn’t say anything more about it. In his head he could still hear that cold, mechanical voice issuing from Kelly’s answering machine: I have taken the liberty of securing you a plane ticket for tomorrow evening from JFK to Burlington International. You can pick up your ticket at the counter, and a driver will be at Burlington when your flight comes in to take you to the compound. I apologize for the brevity of this message, but there is much to attend to here. Your parents look forward to your arrival. How could a human being be so cold, so formal? And what kind of parents have some personal assistant make such a telephone call in the first place? It was utterly ridiculous. Josh hadn’t necessarily grown up in the most nuclear of households, but such estrangement between family members seemed absurd to him.
“That poor girl,” Kelly whispered and finished off her vodka. “I should have taken her out of there when I left.”
“Christ, Kell, don’t start blaming yourself for all this.”
“It’s no way for a kid to grow up…”
“Still—it’s not your fault. I don’t care what you say, but I’m not going to let you believe that, you understand? Don’t be that way.”
“I just…” She rested her face in her hands again. She’d set her empty rocks glass at her feet and now she accidentally kicked it with the toe of her left foot, knocking it on its side and sending it into revolutions across the floor. “My childhood was a very unusual one, Josh. My parents were very cold, unforgiving people and I think that if I stayed there with them I would have turned out pretty cold and unforgiving too. I was sent away at fifteen. I married Collin at eighteen and moved to New Hampshire. I was running away, I knew it even then, but it was just something I had to do. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“What was so horrible back home?”
The rocks glass at her feet had stopped rolling. Now, she stared down at it as if it held all her answers. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the most difficult thing of all. I can’t remember. But I do think
it has something to do with the way I’ve been feeling lately. And maybe with Becky, too.”
“How is that possible?”
She just shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not possible at all.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said and threw a clumsy arm around her shoulder. He thought of Nellie at that moment and was suddenly surprised at how promptly the old woman had slipped from his mind. He wouldn’t bring up Nellie’s stroke now. It would just have to wait until Kelly came back from the—compound, he thought and shuddered. It was just so damned institutional.
What if Nellie Worthridge is dead by the time Kelly comes back? a small voice deep inside his head spoke up. And on the heels of that: What if Kelly never even comes back at all?
Of course she would be back. Why wouldn’t she?
His mind shifted from Nellie to Sampers, He of the Greasy Hair and the Chapped Lips. Sampers had had a first name—was it Kenneth?—and had a father and a stepmother and a little sister and lived in a house and probably had a dog and maybe some old skin magazines hidden under his bed and maybe his old man beat him and maybe his stepmother was a degenerate alcoholic and maybe all those things came together and, in the end, created a monster out of Kenneth Sampers. Or maybe none of that was true and Sampers—the monster Sampers—was just birthed that way by nature. Josh recalled an intensity in Sampers’s eyes in the mere moments before the trigger was pulled, and it was a muddled, alarming intensity, brimming with questions and confusion. As if his brain was flying solo and his actions, no matter what drove his desires, were inevitable. Maybe sometimes, Josh thought, bad things just happen for no reason and without provocation. And what could you do?
Nothing, he knew. We can do nothing.
He comforted Kelly and let her fall asleep on his shoulder until it was time to leave for the airport.