by Amy Bloom
“It’s insulation.” I held out my hand, and she laid it on my palm like a gift. Her hand was cleaner than mine would ever be.
“Being a plumber, you must get into some interesting places.” She looked me straight in the eye as she said it. She seemed calm again. And very, very focused.
“I do,” I responded evenly, but my cheeks flushed some more. She saw it. And she kept her eyes on mine.
“Tell me: what kind of places?”
“What kind of places?” I repeated.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me on a job. Maybe it’s because I’m a stranger in a person’s private space—their bedroom, their bathroom—yet I’m also invited. I’m anonymous, yet intimate. It’s a turn-on for some people, I guess. Including me.
“Places—places that can get very dirty,” I managed. My face was burning up. I put some more Scotch in my mouth and breathed in again and leaned toward her. Wood smoke and leather, and dried cherries, that was it, and Mrs. Lancaster’s musky perfume, and her burning sorrow, I could smell that too, and the smell of her mouth that would be a little smoky from the Scotch, and I leaned in toward her mouth and then I smelled something else, the faintest edge of sulfur, a smell that sent a little jolt of fear through me and knocked all the other jolts away.
I put down my glass. “You have a gas leak,” I said.
She looked at me blankly.
“I smell gas. You have a gas leak somewhere in your house.”
She sat back in her chair, affronted. “I don’t smell anything.”
“I have an excellent nose.” Talk about a buzzkill. Even the greenest apprentice has heard stories of houses blowing up, entire buildings exploding, because of a gas leak. Sometimes it’s equipment failure, sometimes a homeowner’s bad handiwork. Sometimes it’s the plumber’s fault, and then careers and lives get ruined. I’ve seen it happen.
I sniffed the stove burners, opened the oven. Nothing there. “Is that the basement door?”
She nodded, and as soon as I opened it, the smell hit me stronger. I grabbed my tool bag and went down the stairs without asking and began soaping the gas pipes with leak detector. Upstairs I heard a door close, but it wasn’t the basement door. Then I heard Mrs. Lancaster say something, though she wasn’t talking to me. Another door closing, another voice, distant. I kept soaping, and after a few minutes I found it: a leak at the union joint near the furnace.
There was a creak on the stairs behind me and a pair of shoes appeared. Not Mrs. Lancaster’s size. These were big leather dress shoes, followed by khaki slacks, followed by a blue oxford shirt and a paisley silk tie and, finally, the face of Richard Lancaster, the guy who drills grad students in his wife’s bedroom.
“Helene said you smelled gas,” he said by way of greeting.
“I found the leak,” I replied, since it seemed we were skipping introductions. Nicky Biglietti, the plumber who tries to kiss married women in their kitchens. “Look at this.” Big rainbow bubbles were popping up through the leak detector suds.
He got down on his haunches, stiffly, so that his silver head was level with mine. He looked like someone who had an endowed chair: handsome face in a WASPy sort of way, his nose a little too long and bony, but smart blue eyes, good chin, hair that was silvering nicely. Aging but aging well, just like his wife.
“What are all those bubbles?” he asked.
“Soapsuds. If there’s a leak, the escaping gas blows bubbles in it. If there’s no leak, the suds just sit there—watch.” I hoisted my wrenches, gave a turn of the union, and the bubbling stopped. “Now it’s tight. I turn it the other way, the bubbles come back, see? Now it’s tight again.”
“I never smelled any gas leak,” he said.
“Your wife didn’t either. I’m guessing you don’t visit your basement much.” I picked up my bag and started for the stairs.
“Do you often find gas leaks in houses you’re working in?”
“It happens.”
“Good way to get a little extra money out of the customer, I imagine.”
I stopped on the bottom step. “The customer’s already paid me,” I said. I drew the check out of my breast pocket and unfolded it so he could see. “Richard and Helene Lancaster. I’ve met Helene, so you must be Richard. Mind if I call you dick?”
If I hadn’t had the Scotch, maybe I wouldn’t have said it. His face worked a little, but nothing came of it. He’d probably heard the crack a million times growing up, which made me feel not great.
“I checked out the gas leak as much for my sake as for yours,” I said, attempting to move on. “I used to know a contractor who did sloppy work and blew up an apartment building. He’s in jail now. Plumbing’s a riskier job than you’d think—”
“I’m sorry,” he said suddenly. He shifted in his dress shoes, uncomfortable. “We had another plumber here only last month about that same drain, and when it clogged again I thought maybe he hadn’t done it right—you know, hoping for more work. I was still thinking of that when I said . . .” He stopped, embarrassed.
“Skip it,” I said. “But he fixed it fine. The clog this time was a necklace.”
He let out a huff of exasperation. “Helene should really be more careful.”
And that was the point where I should have remembered something Charlotte used to tell me. That I have a smart mouth. Because if I hadn’t said what I said next, maybe things would have been different. But I did say it. I stood on the bottom step, and because I am barely 5'2" and he was a nearly a foot taller, our eyes were almost level.
“Your wife said the necklace wasn’t hers.”
He frowned again. “Well, who else would it belong to?”
The words were barely out of his mouth when a kind of wrinkle passed over his face. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was like a wrinkle on a bedspread that you smooth out with your hand until you come to the edge of the mattress and it disappears. It happened so fast it almost didn’t happen: half a second later, his face was perfect again. A freshly made bed, everything tucked in just so. With no expression at all.
He looked away first. “Helene says a great many things,” he said.
“I’ve heard some of them,” I answered.
And the bed came unmade, just like that. His right eye started twitching and his mouth started to open and then closed up into a tight line instead. His eyes flew up to the door at the top of the stairs behind me and across to the furnace and back to me and I just stood there, not moving and not sure what I was waiting for. Her, maybe.
“You like her?” he asked me.
I hesitated.
“Because lots of people do. Or should I say, she likes a lot of people.”
Maybe it was a game they played, each of them telling a stranger about the other’s infidelities. But I’d had enough. I hoisted up my tool bag and started up the stairs.
“Wait,” he said. “Let me pay you for your extra work on the gas pipe.”
“Forget it,” I replied over my shoulder. “It only took a minute.”
“No,” he said forcefully, “we’re grateful you found the leak. I’d like to pay you.”
“No need,” I replied again, and before he could stop me, I was up the basement stairs and through a kitchen that was empty except for two half-drunk glasses of Scotch, and past a couple of living rooms or sitting rooms or whatever they were, and out the front door and gone. I was a little creeped out, to tell you the truth.
* * *
I had lunch at Sababa and was walking back to my van when I spotted Cal Watkins on the other side of Whitney. He wasn’t wearing his plumbing clothes, which was unusual for a workday, and he was carrying a bouquet of pink roses wrapped in cellophane, also unusual. I called out to him and he crossed over to my side.
“Nicky Big, what’s up?”
“I’m freaked out from a job I just did. But look at you, fancy-dress man.” Cal had on a pair of very new-looking blue jeans and a gray blazer. “You buy those flowers for me?”
“Meri’s playing in her school concert. Are you busy? You should come with me—it’s right there at ECA.” He gestured toward a churchy-looking brick building at the end of Audubon Street. “You can tell me about your freak-out on the way.”
“Are you kidding? Look at me, Cal. I’m filthy and I smell bad.”
He sniffed in my direction. “I don’t smell anything. Come on, Nicky. Meri’s really good, and I’m by myself—Wanda couldn’t get off work.”
“All right, then.” I’ve known Cal since plumbing school, almost ten years. I was the only woman in the class and he was the only black man, and after a few weeks of no one speaking to either of us, we began speaking to each other. He’s older than me by a lot, and became a plumber after he got out of the Army, an experience he refuses to discuss. Like me, Cal works by himself, and we take turns calling on each other for favors.
We sat on the hard seats in the high school auditorium and I told Cal what had happened at the Lancasters’. By the end he was shaking his head.
“Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. Where do you find these people? The guy was trying to bribe you.”
“What? When?”
“At the end, when he offered to pay you extra. Since when do rich people do that? It was so you wouldn’t say anything about his girlfriends.”
“I don’t think so. His wife said she’s been telling people for years and no one believes her.”
The lights went down then, and a handful of teenagers walked onto the stage. I don’t know anything about classical music. Cal had to remind me that the instrument Meri was playing was called a cello. But the way she played it made her the only person in the auditorium. The music seemed to be coming out of her body as much as out of the instrument. It made me stop thinking about everything that was swimming around in my head and just listen, as if nothing was happening anywhere except this girl and her music. It got to me.
When the lights came on we went over to her, and watching Cal hug his daughter I realized that “beaming with pride” is not just an expression. Light seemed to be radiating out of his dark eyes, his high cheekbones, his split-open grin.
“Meri, you remember Miss Nicky? She helped me put in our boiler last summer.”
“Your playing was amazing,” I said.
She thanked me politely, ducking her head down toward the roses, hiding a smile that was just like her dad’s.
“I’m coming back tomorrow night to hear her again at the evening concert,” Cal said. Wanda and me will both be here.”
I left them then, excusing myself to go home and take a shower.
* * *
The next day was easier work. No drain cleaning, no dead mice, no accusations of infidelity. I had a couple of faucet installations in Fair Haven, got lunch at El Coquí, and then drove over to Prospect Street to investigate a complaint about noisy pipes for a sweet old lady named Mrs. Berger. It was while I was in her basement that Richard Lancaster called.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I still smell gas.”
“From the furnace?”
“I don’t know where it’s coming from. Right now I’m standing in the living room.”
No plumber likes a callback. Especially not a callback about a gas leak. And especially not from a customer you don’t like. I could have told him to contact the gas company, but on the off chance I’d made some dumb mistake, I wanted to get back there myself and correct it.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
“I have to give a lecture in thirty minutes. Can’t you come now?”
Some people think I have no customers but them. “No,” I said. “I can’t come now. I’ll be there by three, but not sooner. Isn’t Mrs. Lancaster there?”
“I don’t know where Helene is. Look, I’ll leave a key under the mat for you. An hour will be fine.”
I tried to hurry up and finish at Mrs. Berger’s. I found the bad washer and installed a new one, but when I went to turn the water back on, the main valve broke. It happens in old houses sometimes, and it meant Mrs. Berger would have no water until I replaced it. It would be another hour of work at least, maybe two. I went upstairs and broke the bad news to Mrs. Berger, and then I called Cal.
“Would you have time to do me a favor?”
“Right now I’m sitting in my truck on State Street eating a honey-glazed donut,” he said. “But when I finish my donut, I might.”
I explained about Richard Lancaster smelling gas.
“All right,” he said, “but tell him who’s coming.” Cal is careful with white customers who don’t know him. I know he’s had trouble before, but he doesn’t like to talk about it. He makes a point of wearing a very official-looking uniform, with Watkins Plumbing emblazoned across his jacket in big red letters. I, on the other hand, don’t wear a uniform at all.
“I’ll tell him,” I said, “but he won’t be there. The key’s under the mat.”
I left Mr. Lancaster a message on his cell phone, and for good measure I looked up their home number and left a message there too.
About twenty minutes later, Cal called back. I knew it was him because my cell phone said so. But I almost couldn’t recognize the voice because I’d never heard Cal’s voice an octave higher than usual and talking so fast he tripped over his words. It scared me just listening to him, because even without being able to understand him it was clear he was terrified.
“Slow down,” I said. “Are you all right?” All I could imagine was that one of the Lancasters had been home and thought he was breaking in and pulled a gun on him, and what was I thinking, asking him to check on my customers for me when I knew shit like this could happen? That went through my brain in the half-second it took Cal to catch his breath.
Then he said, still high and fast, “Nicky, you got a fucking body over here, and gas pouring out the basement, and I called 911 and pulled her out but you better get over here NOW, I think she’s dead, Nicky, and gas everywhere, oh, here they come.”
He hung up, but not before I heard the sirens behind him.
I don’t know how I made it there in one piece. I was shaking so bad I could hardly hold the wheel steady and I don’t remember driving that half-mile, only that I didn’t stop for lights and it was like one of those dreams where you’re running but can’t move, as if the air has turned into molasses and you’re stuck in it. But somehow I was eventually parking behind an ambulance and two fire trucks and running toward the house where a group of firefighters was kneeling in a circle on the front lawn. I could see something on the grass in the center of that circle. Something gold, her hair in the sun, and that gold was the only bright thing on that lawn, almost lost among the dark heavy coats of the men around her. I ran toward her and it was like dream running. It took forever. One of the firemen stood up and then I saw she was lying on her back, and as I ran I saw the gash on her head, the blood drying in a rusty stain across her forehead and into her hair. One of her arms was flung out to the side as if she were pointing. Pointing at me. I ran toward her until someone called my name, and only then did I turn and see the police car.
It was parked on the far side of the fire trucks. There was a cop standing with his back to me, and in front of him, pinned between him and his cruiser, was Cal, jammed spread-eagled against the door, his face turned sideways against the vehicle’s roof. The officer was patting him down.
“Nicky,” he called again, and my legs worked and I ran up to them, yelling.
“Officer, stop!” I said. “Cal didn’t do anything! I sent him over here, I’m the plumber, he’s a plumber too, his name’s Cal Watkins, see on his jacket, but it’s not his job, it’s my job, I asked him to check on my job for me, everything was fine yesterday, he didn’t do anything, he just got here.”
I went on like that while the cop put Cal in handcuffs and told him not to move. Only then did he turn and look at me. Crew cut, blue eyes, baby-faced, still young. We could have gone to high school together.
“Officer.” My voice was really shakin
g. I took a breath and tried to focus. K. Milner, his name tag said. “Officer Milner. I was working in that house yesterday and I found a gas leak and fixed it. But the homeowner called me back and said he still smelled it. I was busy and I asked Cal to go. He has nothing to do with this.”
“I told you,” Cal said to the cop, his face still pressed against the top of the cruiser, “I found a lady laying at the bottom of the stairs in a house full of gas and I carried her out. I’m a veteran. I’m the one who called you.”
Milner ignored this. He was looking at me. “You were working in there yesterday?” he asked.
“Yes, but I fixed the gas leak. They couldn’t even smell it. I found it and I fixed it and I don’t know what happened, but—”
“Nicky,” Cal said hoarsely, “stop talking.”
It was too late.
“Turn around,” Milner said to me. “Hands behind your back.”
I didn’t move. A sick feeling broke over me like a wave and for a second I thought I might pass out.
“Why?” I asked.
“A lady’s dead in a gas-filled basement and you’ve just admitted you’re the one who worked on the gas.” Milner’s baby face looked harder suddenly. “Hands behind your back,” he repeated. “You’re under arrest for criminally negligent homicide.”
I saw a flash of silver in his hands, and a flash of light zigzagging off the silver like the beginnings of a migraine. I’d never been in real handcuffs before, and they hurt.
He left us in the back of the cruiser while he went to talk to the firefighters. I was crying and shaking and couldn’t stop doing either. Cal was silent and rigid beside me.
“Cal,” I tried through chattering teeth, “I am so sorry.”
“I don’t need your apologies, Nicky, I need your lawyer.”
“I swear there was no gas leak when I left yesterday. I tested it and everything.”
“All I know is, I knock on that fancy door and nobody answers, I let myself in like you said, and the smell of gas is so bad my eyes water. I open the basement door and the gas just about knocks me over, and at the bottom of the stairs is a lady lying crumpled in a heap. So I run down the stairs coughing my lungs out and carry her out of there and dump her on the lawn and call 911 and now I’m in cuffs in the back of a cop car. Meri’s concert is tonight, Nicky. Am I gonna see Wanda and Meri again?”