Seeking Carol Lee

by Nace Phlaux

  “KFC’s got buckets.”

  “Let’s go get some of ‘em then.” We walked off the grassy area the camp was set on to the blacktop of the parking lot, her backing up the whole way with her hands buried in her hoodie and me holding my hands up like I was being held up.

  As we walked to the KFC on the other side of the strip mall, I must’ve been eyeing her the wrong way ‘cause she said, “I know what you’re thinking, and we ain’t all crazy or cracked out. Some of us just fell on hard times and didn’t have no choice. We even got them snowbird niggas that’ll all be back up in here in June when they balls sweating in their cushy underpass homes in Florida.”

  “And you?”

  “Me and my sister were living in North Philly. She died of bacterial meningitis without a will. All the money went to the doctor bills, and the city took the house.” She hesitated when I opened the door for her but eventually relented to the idea I wasn’t going to bash her head in with a KFC entryway, though the thought to swing the door a touch to scare her had crossed my mind.

  We ordered food—her a big bucket combo and me the potato wedges to be polite—and picked a spot close to the register, probably so the staff was closer should I try to make a move. Not sure what the pimple-faced, all of 5’3” kid hustling chicken breasts could do to help, but you never know what ninja shit people break out in times of crisis. After a few minutes of stuffing our faces, she continued to eat but sat back in her seat, signaling she was ready to talk.

  “There’s a gentleman that’s either in or been in your camp named Milnes.”

  “Owe you money?” she said with her mouth still full. I felt bad for her situation, but have some freakin’ manners, you know? Her legs seemed to twitch the entire time we sat there, probably to help her warm up, and the vibrations through the floor sickened my stomach.

  “There’s people looking for him, darlin’, and these people aren’t going to be offering food or money, just pain.” I pulled up my sleeves and showed off the remnants of the previous night’s festivities, causing her to wince. “There or not, they’re gonna burn your place to the ground to find him. So it’d be a lot better if I found him first.”

  “And what do you care about ‘my place’?” she said snidely.

  “Honest? I don’t care two bits. I just want to stick in someone’s craw, if you know what I’m sayin’, and that means finding an Eric Milnes before she does.”

  “Wait, you talking about Uncle Eric?” She licked her fingers clean in a hurry and wiped herself down with a collection of napkins, practically leaping to her feet with the rest of the food in tow. “No, no, not Uncle E, not him, no,” she mumbled as we raced back to the shantytown, shuffling as best she could with her hands still buried in the pocket, her elbows flailing as she ran, and shouted the name as we got to the edge of their little community.

  A man came out of the same enclosure the Philly girl came out from, looking like he’d probably be around our age if he got a hot shower. Seemed surprisingly well groomed, now that I think about it. In his arm was a small Korean girl, and another followed him out of the shelter. The little girls wore those baggy Monster hoodies you always see in New Jersey, but he had an Eagles jacket from a couple seasons back. “This guy giving you problems, Syd?” He eyed me over and handed the toddler off to the other little girl, more so helping her to the ground since they were nearly the same size.

  “He saying someone’s after you, but he bought us some dinner.”

  She handed him the bucket, and he gave it to the bigger of the girls, telling her to take it inside. “Save me a piece too, Nevaeh. And don’t hog the whole thing for yourself, for Christ’s sake. Don’t want to look like Aunt Charlie, right?” The girls told him “no” in unison and went inside. “All right, you made your peace offering,” he said to me as soon as the girls were out of sight. “Now what can I do you for?”

  “Carol Lee.”

  His face drained of color, and a tick went off in one of his nostrils. He gazed at me blankly for a moment, before collecting himself and asking the Syd woman inside. When she objected, he said, “No, no, it’s fine, Sydney. I’ll be along in a minute.” Real quiet. Real shooken up. I didn’t know if I’d mentioned a dead sister or someone that’d killed his first puppy, but he certainly knew the name.

  The girl walked into the shelter, looking over her shoulder to check Milnes out one last time. I edged closer to him and asked, “The girls hers or her sister’s?”

  “‘S’it matter?” he said, looking back at where she’d been standing, right before swinging around and pounding me in the temple.

  I stumbled back, instinctively reaching for my head with one hand and getting into a fighting stance with the other. But when my vision focused again, I found Milnes crouched on the ground, openly weeping into his palms. This went on for longer than I would’ve cared for, long enough for me to drop my guard, more because my muscles were getting tense rather than me feeling any safer.

  Instead of fighting me anymore, he pounded into his own head like a kid having a seizure, shouting, “Those twins’ve destroyed my life. But I deserve it. I deserve it. I. De. Serve. It.” He stopped when I took a step, the crunching gravel reminding him he wasn’t alone. “I didn’t know how to save my marriage. She was just always so down. Couldn’t crack jokes. Flowers just got left to die. Couldn’t even get a rise from yelling.”

  He couldn’t raise his eyes to look at me, couldn’t lift a hand either, both limp at his sides with him still kneeling on the ground. Moisture covered his face and dripped from his nostrils. “The first time I slapped her, she didn’t say anything. Just stared off for a moment, then walked off to the bathroom. The last time? The last time. It was fairly obvious it’d be the last time we’d be in the same room again.”

  The thought to let the girl have him crossed my mind. But I’d gotten this far. I had to finish the mission. “But who’s Carol Lee, Eric? How’s she fit into all this?” I crouched to one knee, staring at him until he finally met my eye, giving a slight sneer or a sniff. Still not sure which. “Who is she?”

  “A little over thirty years now, my wife and I tried to have a baby but didn’t have any luck. She got into the whole tracking her cycle, doing handstands after sex, whatever the magazines or the ladies at the salon suggested. The doctor finally gave her the news that she was barren.”

  He broke eye contact for a moment and came back with this sick grin that made me think we were crossing into crazy territory. “I hoped she’d go into crocheting or a hobby to distract her, but the owner of the shop she’d been working at had a pregnant daughter looking to give a kid up for adoption. From what we were told, she was pregnant with twins: One was Carol Lee, the one she wanted to keep, and the other would be ours. She wasn’t prepped to raise two, our lawyer told us. Nicole already named her Natasha, not even knowing the gender yet.

  “We paid for everything. I took out loans and worked overtime at any job I could get my hands on. But in the end, the labor had complications. Carol Lee died, and the mother kept who we named Natasha. From what my wife heard, the twins’ mother named her Christina.

  “We tried to stay supportive. Sent Thank You cards, gift certificates to Kiddie City, and shit like that. After no response, we just stopped. Gave up. Every cent I worked for was gone, sacrificed for a kid we’d never get. The little time Nicole got to be happy...She went right back to the apathetic blank stare.” He sighed, brushing his hand through what was left of his hair. “May was the first time I struck her. Sometime in October was the last. Haven’t seen her since, but signed plenty of her paperwork.”

  “Looks like your past is coming back to haunt you, hoss.” I don’t know why I called him “hoss.” You’d be laughing your ass off, I’m sure, if you could actually hear me now. Blame it on my mind reeling, the heavy feeling in my gut. Blame it on the rain, if you’re feeling 80s. But something wasn’t adding up, and I couldn’t figure it out. My eyes wouldn’t focus for a second there, and it dawned on me that
twilight had come and nearly gone. “You have somewhere to go? Something even less connected to the outside world than this?”

  “There’s another community over—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. You gotta learn to keep your mouth shut if you’re going to survive this. What about the girls? They all right out here with the rest of ‘em?” I nodded toward the rest of the commune. A couple of the shelters glowed from flashlights or lanterns, and one looked like they’d built a fire, which couldn’t have been healthy.

  “They’ll live, but ever since they showed up a few months ago, I’ve been watching the kids while Sydney’s looking for jobs or connecting.” The color started coming back to him, and his general posture seemed to relax. The self-abusing crackpot was turning back around.

  “There’s a mechanic across the street. Mazzaro’s Automotive. You know it?” He nodded that he did. “Tell her to go over there tomorrow morning. Say Eddie sent her. Won’t pay much, and she’ll probably be cleaning and sweeping the place up unless she happens to know her way around an engine. But it’s not far either, and they might even let the girls stay in the house for a bit. All depends on how nice the front clerk’s feeling, understood?”

  And that, brother, is how a five-foot-tall Korean girl came into your garage and offered you her services. You’re welcome. I’ve never seen the place look better. Maybe you should’ve hired a real woman long ago.

  * * *

  I don’t remember too much about your wedding day. Hayleigh insisted it not be at a church, and with us not really being raised religious, you didn’t argue. She said a low-key wedding would be best. The less family there, the less to say stupid shit like “If only your father had lived to see this.” Me, a couple of her girlfriends, and her mom. All wedded up, we had the reception at Fisher’s in Bensalem, right?

  Hayleigh’s mother didn’t seem happy about anything and kept quiet to herself for most of the night. None of the friends were anything of note, so I spent my time at the bar. At one point, two of the friends came into earshot, and I could’ve sworn I heard them talking about a guy one of ‘em had been into at a bachelorette party I didn’t even know went down. Shortly after, Hayleigh came bouncing up to the bar, a little tipsy herself, and asked, “Why’s Mister Gloomypants sitting all the way over here?”

  I set down my drink slowly, trying to build a bit of a dramatic dance of sorts, and looked her in the eye. “You’ve taken the last person alive I could ever care about. If you break him, I swear to Christ I’ll tear you apart piece by fuckin’ piece.” Then I turned back and continued with my martini.

  She leaned in close enough for her veil to touch my hair and placed an arm around my shoulders. The scents of wine and makeup and a fine layer of her flowery perfume wafted off her as she opened her mouth and said softly, “If you keep up that sweet talk, Mister Man, I’ll break him just to prove I can.” Then she pecked me on the cheek and scampered back to the table. I…Well, I don’t remember how I even got home that night.

  It seems like I’m going off on a tangent, but how I felt that night was how I felt walking back to the house from the shantytown. Like no matter what choice I made, no matter what path I went down or what I believed, it would result in the same thing: death and/or destruction. I had what the girl wanted but the context eluded me, so what I’d learned was completely useless.

  The house and garage were still dark when I got back, so I drove home, reconsidering my choice to snub Richter, if nothing else for the chance to talk to someone who’d been privy to a shower within the past week. The lot was full of cop cars and an ambulance when I pulled in, automatically putting me in defense mode. The feeling only got worse when I climbed the stairs and found them pacing my floor. A morbid relief came when I saw them going in and out of Richter’s door.

  A note on my door stated the office had mail for me they couldn’t deliver. That could’ve meant several things, but I didn’t want to take the time to investigate. I quickly made my way inside and closed the door, trying to hear what I could through the thin wall separating the apartments. It didn’t take long for someone to knock on my door, sending my heartbeat into overdrive. But they’d seen me come in, and trained ninjas couldn’t have silently hid in that apartment building, so there wasn’t a point in making them wait.

  The 70s and 80s taught me to expect Columbo and Jessica Fletcher, but the man knocking on my door was dressed in a nice blue suit, saying, “Where have you been this afternoon? Did you hear any noises? Are you familiar with Mr. Hewer?”

  “Who?”

  “Your neighbor.”

  “I know him as Richter.”

  “Your neighbor seemed to have a lot of aliases,” he said, jotting down what I assumed was the name I’d offered.. “Pugh, Shaffer, Vivian. The list goes on. We have a pile of IDs and passports. Every bill going to someone different. Are any of them true?” All I could really do is shrug. Who was I to know his name?

  “Is Richter under arrest? Or hurt?” As we talked, Max came out of the bedroom and got riled up, either from the prospect of his food-provider being home or from a stranger being at the door. I held his collar as the conversation continued, and the investigator took a cautious step back from the drooling mutt, causing a wave of hallway air to come in through the door. Someone in Richter’s apartment had been smoking Parliament Menthol 100s. I used to bum them off a woman at the steel. So far, I still wasn’t thrilled with my newfound sense of smell.

  “Mister ..”

  “Mazzaro.”

  “Mr. Mazzaro, the man you know as Richter is dead,” he said. It sounded like standing next to the train tracks. Not the regional rail, but one of those big Amtrak Silver Star or Meteor mothers braking as you’re standing against the line. Screeching metal and sparks and steel tearing apart. “We’re trying to figure out how, so your cooperation would be appreciated.”

  “Did someone hurt him or did one of his toys get him?” I remember asking. Imagine that. If one of the stupid toys or weapons I built for him, that he’d spend nights going on and on with specifications about, hurt him, how could I forgive myself?

  “Toys?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “the man had an obsession. Stun guns and homemade self-defense gadgets he’d make.” I didn’t want to admit I’d made anything since I doubted the legality of any of it. “I think he had an exploding laptop. Ya’ll didn’t find any of that in his apartment?” The answer was written on his face and confirmed by his jotting in his notebook. Whoever killed him robbed him too. And I still didn’t know if any of this was connected to how he’d hurt his leg weeks prior.

  “Do the words ‘negative zero’ mean anything to you?”

  “No, what’s that got to do with this?” He looked down to his notebook and jotted something, shaking his head at my question.

  The investigator thanked me a moment later and went on his way, but after a short amount of time of listening to him and his crew through the wall, I headed over to Gleason’s. It was a quiet night, and the bartender seemed like the weathered type, the type who didn’t come to comfort me while I silently wept and instead delivered beer after finished beer without question. I grieved the only way I knew, especially for a nameless man.

  * * *

  It’ll be sixteen years this summer since the day Mom had called me and told me Dad was doing something special and wanted everyone there to witness. When I got to the house, we all drove down the Boulevard to Faulkner, and Dad picked up his ‘87 Cadillac Brougham with that sweet champagne paint job they used to do. As we drove back, Ma explored what she could from the passenger seat, and we heard her say, “What does this button do?” before the trunk suddenly swung open. Dad had to pull over to close it up, if you recall, and the ordeal became one of her cute stories that got repeated to everyone before she passed.

  By the time we got home, someone from her doctor’s office had left a message on the machine for Ma, and after a depressingly short call back, she let us know they had declared “cancer.” A doct
or’s visit later, and we were supposed to believe she only had six months.

  First they replaced the stove with a flat-top electric stove since they were supposed to be better somehow. We all took turns driving her to chemo and to the macrobiotic store in New Jersey. Never quite understood the details, but Dad somehow got cleared to take her to Mexico to get those B-10 shots, right? She brought me back a shot glass from SeaWorld and those sombreros we had hanging all over the place ‘til Hayleigh moved in.

  If you didn’t notice, she got a little confused there at the end. There was a hockey game on the television set, and a nurse must’ve mentioned performing an enema or something. Somewhere in her brain, she combined the two and convinced herself a player had taken a dump on the ice. You’d been watching the shop at the time, and I’d forced Dad to go home to clean himself up, so I don’t know if anyone else got to witness her like that. Christ, I hope not.

  Dad took it so hard the night she passed. The flipping, you know. The nurses would come in and flip her so she didn’t get bedsores, and he’d switch sides of the bed so he’d always be there when she woke. He’d been asleep when they came in the last time, and when she passed, she’d been looking away at the wall instead of him. They say there’s some study or another where most couples die within two years of each other, and Dad followed suit. The wall thing ate at him.

  But you weren’t supposed to know any of those parts. He told you to watch the shop to clear out the cars and deal with anyone new coming in, but in all honesty, I think he wanted to save you from the burden. You’ve always been softer, brother, and I don’t mean that in any weak way. You just don’t have the coldness my heart grew. But I’ll tell you something...I miss my friend. I miss him with my whole heart. Almost as much, I figure, as if something ever happened to you.

  Manny 7