Just as well I hadn’t gotten wind of vandalism and charged outside on the impulsive warpath. I couldn’t have hindered the damage, but I would have become a part of it. The professionals behind this stealth destruction probably needed nothing beyond their little fingers to inflict grievous bodily harm. Furthermore, if they were setting an ambush after all, I might well loiter here stupidly till it was too late. Yikes! I spun around, probing the darkness left, right, fore, and aft. Nobody. The thugs’ assignment must have been to leave a message, and they had.
Into my head popped the cable-company rep’s needling question after Pabodie had disconnected me. Who’d I piss off? The answer was plain as ever, and brought to mind those City Hall goons moonlighting at the Historical Society yard sale. I pondered why they’d mobilized on an anticlimactic Tuesday rather than Monday night, which would have begun my workweek on a miserable note. But that would have meant working on Labor Day, and these were Yankees holding the purse strings, weren’t they? Third-floor patricians may have been ruthless, but they were simply too cheap to splurge on holiday pay. Thereby adding to my injury the insult that I wasn’t worth those extra dollars. With damp dishcloth I mechanically swabbed at fragments on the driver’s seat. Not very efficient. I flung the cloth over the roof of the car and went back in the house.
Remarkably, I enjoyed a full, refreshing night’s rest. The prospects of dealing with my busted-up car made for one stressor too many and pushed my brain into shorting out and shutting down, till the 7 A.M. alarm went off.
18
I clocked in a minute early, despite fastidious purge of every window fragment in, around, and under the car after breakfast. I donned work gloves and wielded whiskbroom, dustpan, and push broom against most of it, and sicced a Dirt Devil on stubborn shiny grains and dust. Arrival at City Hall was further delayed because I didn’t want to hand any alien bureaucrats the satisfaction of gloating at my incomplete Taurus, so it went into expensive seclusion in a parking garage, six blocks away. Where it was also less vulnerable to ticketing by meter maids intolerant of missing windshields. Contemplated what to do about replacement glass, while the morning trundled by as if nobody on the premises had ever directed malice, or the least thought, at me. Leaving the car overnight for repairs and walking home, and into town again tomorrow, was not an option. Especially when keys to another vehicle had been clogging my hip pocket for weeks.
Up in oyster-like Mr. Marsh’s musty vault of an office, I was filing six months of receipts for recycling and other city services doled out to private contractors. Mr. Marsh was at a meeting till noon. I could use his phone with impunity, and I had more than one reason to call Ranger Metcalfe at Parks and Recreation.
Based now on two occasions in total, I decided that Ranger Metcalfe always picked up the phone at the reservoir Control Center, and that he was always chipper. Still, I erred on the side of caution and asked if I’d reached whom I thought I had.
“Yes, this is he. Just call me Herb, okay? And you’re Wil’s friend, right? We really need to talk.”
“Why, what’s up?” Suddenly the dynamic had flipped and it felt like he’d rung me. Might as well play along with it.
“Wil hasn’t come back to work yet. We’re trying to get him on Workmen’s Comp because he’s apparently suffering complications from his injury and he’s run out of sick time, but we can’t even persuade him to make a doctor’s appointment. He let us in to drop off groceries a few times, but he stopped answering the phone and the doorbell several days ago. You have a house key, don’t you?”
Jesus, what a sorry schmuck I’d become in the last thirty seconds. Herb referred to me as Wil’s friend, a title he and his coworkers much more richly deserved than I ever would. All the same, how pleasing to hear him volunteer the info I’d been preparing to wheedle out of him. Wil’s car was up for grabs. “Yeah, I’ve held on to his keys. Have ’em on me, actually.”
Herb didn’t want to trouble me, but could I possibly front some items at the market that Wil might be out of, and put them away in his kitchen?
I agreed without hesitation, though that made me twice as shameless a heel, since my own ulterior reasons to visit Wil were uppermost in mind. “And what about baby food or diapers for Morgan? How is he doing?”
“Morgan?” Herb was sounding flummoxed, and I kicked myself for complicating matters. “Nobody in there but Wil.”
“Sorry, my mind was elsewhere a second. My mistake. Can you read me that grocery list?” I managed to scribble most of the order on a sheet of Xerox paper from a desk drawer, though between my ears wheels within wheels were spinning. Herb was hoping I could let him know what shape Wil was in, and I suggested doing so at the Aviator tomorrow evening, where he could also relate that paranormal story he’d brought up at the reservoir last month. Who could say but that it mightn’t give me a segue for inveigling him into my coalescing master plan?
My subpar ethics were turning into Wednesday’s leitmotif. Finished my filing a little shy of twelve o’clock and snuck out early in case I needed a seventy-minute lunch hour to get everything done. Hoofed it to the parking garage and removed the car to an auto glass specialist without running afoul of traffic enforcement. A compact, toothy salesman in red jumpsuit promised, zealously and ambiguously, that in twenty-four hours I’d never be able to tell the car had been fixed. Had to hope his crew wouldn’t include the two guys out front, on the precarious verge of sliding feebly off their bench. They could have been flimsy papier-mâché statues inside grimy examples of company jumpsuit. Their complexions seemed uniformly suffused with faded blue ink, and a moment went by before one of them yawned as proof of life.
Lunch hour was in peril of going into extra minutes after as well as before, with nothing in my stomach to show for it. But in for a penny, in for a pound. Trotted over to Dyer Hall and found the signal on Wil’s keychain to raise the groaning portcullis of adjoining cinderblock garage. Time was at a premium, and hunger was consuming my patience. Thus I excused my negligence in neither checking on Wil nor procuring his permission before borrowing the Outback. Mockingly, a white paper bag from Subway was sitting shotgun beside me, but its contents had festered so long in this stuffy, black-upholstered oven that I loutishly poked it with an ice scraper out the passenger door. My appetite went with it. In the windshield was the ghastly reflection of a dozen dead flies on top of the dashboard. Flicked them out toward the bag with the brush end of the scraper. Driving with the windows down should have done more to freshen the air, but plenty of stink lingered to prevent my hunger from reviving, all the way to my expensive parking space six blocks from City Hall. A blessing of sorts, since I didn’t slip back in till quarter past one, and eating something would have added at least fifteen minutes to that.
Like most downtowns nowadays, Occam proper hosted no supermarkets, so Wil’s groceries called for a round trip to suburbia during rush hour. Preferable, still, to the exorbitance of renting a car. And didn’t I owe Wil whatever was requested of me? At the A&P, same as last market day, I adopted tunnel vision, except to certify that strictly human clerks were on duty at the meat counter and the checkout lane. In the Outback, the odor of rotting grinder had subsided, and resurgent hunger nagged me into chomping down part of my putative supper, an A&P deli chopped liver on pump, while on the road.
I pulled up in front of Dyer Hall. Rewrapped and rebagged the uneaten portion of my chopped-liver pick-me-up and laid it on the relatively untainted driver’s seat. Finessed my two paper sacks of foodstuffs into the building. Lugging clumsy load upstairs engaged me, thank God, to the exclusion of dwelling on what waited inside the apartment.
I fumbled key into lock and elbowed in as if I lived there. Damn, but it was dark. Had I been the rightful, more knowledgeable occupant, I could have made straight for the wall switch instead of dallying while my sight adjusted, the bags gained painful weight, and my nose wrinkled at worse spoilage than in the car. Definitely, leave the door open. Most unnerving, though, was the silence, dea
thly as the void, intimating that no one was alive here. Or at least that watchful eyes belonged to unnatural masters of concealment.
I strained to identify a potentially dangerous bulk, with several humps surmounting its outline, commanding the middle of the room like a Loch Ness monster. Okay, merely the brown leather sofa, of course, and at the nearer end a squat lamp upon side table. Three steps forward, and the lamp’s pull cord was practically in reach. But what the hell was that grit underfoot? Almost miraculously, I managed to bend at the waist and hug the groceries together and pincer the cord between two fingers. Didn’t dare shut my eyes against the initial sting of illumination, nor relax just because nothing rushed at me or moved. Noted in passing, en route to the kitchen, that no light seeped from beneath the closed bedroom door, and that someone, presumably Herb or another ranger, had started tidying up. Dirty laundry, frozen-food trays, broken cups and dishes, dog toys, and mangled paperbacks and mail-order catalogues formed loose jumbles in neutral corners. And the grit? Had pulverized glass from the Taurus somehow preceded me here? If only! No, revulsive gray powder radiated in irregular crescents like multiple high-water lines across varnished hardwood and faux Persian rug, with unequivocal ground zero in the bedroom. Free of shoeprints or signs of sweeping. All of it must have emerged after the last Parks Department visit.
Dimmer switch for kitchen track lighting was right beside the doorway, where my elbow could nudge it. No dust on the green linoleum, and no presence waiting to pounce. However, even with back door in plain view, and black garbage bag in front of it posing no real obstacle, I felt trapped, anxious to brush crumpled soda cans from sticky counter into the sink, set down and put away the provisions, and get going. Spotty cleanup by rangers must have predated the black marble island’s open bag of Fritos and gutted package of hotdogs. Who but Wil would have clawed through the plastic and gouged the center from the two upper rows of franks? Mindfully I held my breath in the vicinity of the island while emptying grocery bags into the refrigerator and cupboards that didn’t really need restocking. Crammed everything in with escalating carelessness, and blamed my fluttering heart for leaving mauled frankfurters where they lay and racing from the kitchen.
Pressed the dimmer switch in passing, but was jumpy enough to dismiss turning off the table lamp as an idle gesture. The brightness of open doorway onto the corridor lured me like an unprincipled moth, until the mute bedroom door stopped me cold. Was Wil in there? Was he alive? All my noise in the kitchen would have given me away if he’d been eager and able to attack. And I’d be off on the wrong foot, to put it mildly, showing up at the Aviator minus a report for Herb on my friend’s status. “Wil?” Thirty seconds ticked by on my wristwatch. Please don’t make me try the door! “Wil?” Ten more seconds elapsed.
“Let me the fuck alone!” What stupendous relief to lower my hand from the doorknob, even as I recoiled from the gurgling, grating distortion that slurred his speech, as if bronchial passages were flooding and abrading at the same time.
Courage to broach the next logical question sprang from the predictability of his response. “Can I come in?”
“No! Go away!”
“I brought you some groceries and put them away for you.”
“Don’t want anybody here. Fuck off!”
“How’s Morgan, Wil? Is he in there with you? Do you need me to get anything for him?”
“No! Nothing, nothing!”
“Okay then. But can I borrow your car overnight? Mine’s at the shop right now.” Permission may have been a moot point, but going through the motions at least paid my conscience some token respect.
The proposition seemed to stump him. Too much to process? In any case, his mind jumped the track. “Do you see Elsie around? Is she getting into the trash again?”
“No.” Couldn’t bring myself to say more. On the sudden verge of tears at hearing stray elkhound’s name again, and gauging from its context the depth of Wil’s derangement. On impulse, I grabbed and twisted the doorknob. Locked.
“Get out!” Wil screeched, with a jarring resonance, as if his voice box had mastered the overtones of a dog whistle. I got out. Wondering, since I’d never identified myself, had he ever realized or cared who I was?
I unlocked the Outback. Plucked the bag of my leftovers off the seat, sat down, and put the bag on my lap. Did I want to finish noshing this minute? A whiff of chopped liver stirred up newfound associations with rancid hotdogs and worst-case visions of Wil’s physical breakdown, and would have made me vomit if not for my snap decision to dump the bag in the gutter.
19
Of all the things that might have scuttled sleep that night, it had to be the silliest. Too often to reckon, unrefreshing slumber gave way to remorse about the lamp I’d wastefully left burning beside Wil’s sofa. But maybe fixating on worries less trivial would have broken the bank of my coping skills, particularly during the small hours. Told myself I’d make amends tomorrow, short of plotting how, exactly.
And I was as good as my word, during a second protracted lunch hour that raised no eyebrows, fortifying my impression of employers feeding me enough rope and adding up infractions on a pink slip. Retrieved the Outback from outdoors municipal parking on Commercial Street, replaced it in Dyer Hall’s garage, and before trotting to the repair shop and reclaiming the Taurus, let myself into Wil’s condo for the express purpose of dousing the lamp and, as long as I was there, testing whether he felt more verbal, or (at the apex of my wishful thinking) more social, not as far gone as I visualized.
He was dramatically worse. Neither gray dust nor living-room middens betrayed activity since yesterday, and bedroom door, impassive and impassable, still rebuffed me. I didn’t re-enter the kitchen. To prevent the same oversight two afternoons running, I immediately tended to the lamp. The room fell into oppressive darkness, despite open doorway onto the corridor. Drapes had sealed out noon sunshine and sealed in the squalor of sick, unwashed flesh and ripening garbage. Softly, then personably, then sternly calling Wil from the prudent distance of the sofa accomplished nothing. Each rank intake of breath boosted my heart nearer my throat as I stole up to the bedroom door. I rapped timidly and, after a pregnant moment, more smartly.
The door never opened, but something lashed out at me from the other side, like a choppy wave knocking me off-balance, backward into the sofa. Earsplitting, ongoing scream restated, less articulately but more forcibly, Wil’s hateful warning yesterday to get out. It was harsher as if saturated with bloodlust, as if he meant to hurt me with it, or murder me if only that were possible. Adding to its nastiness, that overtone of dog whistle, without words or any human inflection to mask it, came through louder and clearer today, inflicting vertigo. And something else in the discord brought back to mind an August evening in front of this building, when someone whom I’d prayed was not Lucinda screamed with equally inexhaustible lungs and almost subliminal shifts and gaps between pitches and vowels, as if code were embedded in the hysteria.
To stay and listen was intolerable, but some new texture in the sonic assault made me pause. God, yes, two voices, and not one, were targeting me, and the second was thinner and trebly, like a sickly infant’s. No match for Wil’s lung capacity, but piercing all the same. Morgan resurrected, or simply the vessel of his corpse recycled, as by a hermit crab? I beat a panicky retreat.
Nobody was up in arms, or even spying through cracks in doorways, at the vocal torrent spilling into the corridor. An assortment of neighbors too inured, too spooked, or too ill themselves, after a summer of officially debunked tribulations? Locking up the apartment did, by way of small mercy, lock in most of the decibels. Thankfully, I didn’t see or hear anything else in the building to alter my perception of hurrying from a deserted mausoleum.
Though I knew the outcome all along, I wrestled till five o’clock with the quandary of what to do about Wil and Morgan. I was too remorseful to admit outright that I wouldn’t lift a finger for them simply because they’d been parasitized beyond anyone�
�s power to help them. No personality or soul to salvage. Even less defensibly, I couldn’t afford to let Herb, my lone ally, deal with anything except executing my plan, with its potential to achieve the much greater good. Suppose we did break down Wil’s bedroom door? What then but to phone the ambulance and consign the godforsaken bodies within to oblivion in a hospital instead of their home? No good would come of it, not to Wil or to us. More rational for Herb and me to operate below the radar and keep our names out of hospital and police logs.
Whittled away an hour at the residually deco, dirt-cheap Koerner’s A Lunch. That was the name on the flaking sign dangling over the sidewalk. Another ornery holdout of the “old Occam,” off Commercial Street, between the padlocked former addresses of a credit union and a law firm. Took a gamble on the corned beef hash, though it didn’t always sit peaceably. While I was dining, an ancient drunk wobbled up to the chrome counter, and the owner, a stout, balding Greek, slid him a doughnut and coffee, surreptitiously, as if reluctant to come across as a softie and encourage more moochers. The owner also wiped down all the white enamel tabletops with industrial-strength bleach before I was finished eating, as if to handicap my appetite. He locked the door after me. After the citywide scourge, this would be one place I’d wish I had patronized more often, despite the first flutters of indigestion in five minutes.
Be that as it may, selfish of me to fend for myself and condemn Herb to the Aviator’s bill of fare, but I just couldn’t hack a microwave burrito tonight. Hell, between manipulating and deceiving him, our relationship was already on a rocky course. Parked right about where Recorder of Deeds Edward Orne would have landed upon ejection those many weeks ago, at the corner, within spitting distance of the Aviator’s door. Such a prime spot seemed a stroke of luck till I went in. Business over at Koerner’s was always so sluggish that its year-to-year survival was mystifying, but for the Aviator to be comparably spacious during happy hour? That was eerie.
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