The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “That doesn’t seem fair at all.”

  “Fair hasn’t nothin’ to do with it. I need all the cash.”

  “Take a second on the house you’re in.”

  “Mortgage?” asked Stew. “I already got two. Not gonna get another. I gotta sell. You’re gonna do it.”

  “I’d like to,” she said, sounding a bit more attentive. “But we all have to make a living. And I make mine on commission.”

  “I’m sayin’ you’ll make it on the spec house.”

  “You just said it. You got a cash problem. For all I know, you won’t finish the spec—”

  “Saying I’m not gonna finish it? Who the hell are you to—”

  “Didn’t say that at all, hon’. Just saying the market can go soft. You’re already late. And my kid’s gotta eat.”

  Stew stopped, kicked at a dirt clod, sending it flying into the bottom of the unfinished pool.

  “So you won’t list the house I’m in.”

  “I’ll do it for two points.”

  “No points or you don’t get the spec house.”

  “Hey Stew? Be a sweetie, huh. I got another call comin’ in. Can we talk about this later?”

  Stew answered by folding his phone closed and holstering it. He stood still for a moment and tried to breathe. His left knee ached, the pain swelling as he strained to crush the rage inside. When he closed his eyes his vision turned the color of burnt orange, bordered by a black fog. He couldn’t exactly see Jerome, the Sax Man, in his mind’s eye. But he could feel his presence. And somewhere in his head Stew found himself smelling that putrid, sulfurous smell of the Stink Hole bathroom where he had killed the Sax Man.

  “Fuck it,” said Stew, spinning in the dirt and hobbling back toward the front. Then he shouted to Henry, “Goin’ to the hardware store. Back after lunch!”

  In a mere twenty-two minutes, Stew drove to a local hardware store, made his cash purchase, tossed the armload of goods into the bed of his truck, drove three miles, and cranked the parking brake after skidding to a stop at the curb outside his Morrison Street house.

  And despite Stew’s intent to return to the site that very afternoon, Henry, the site foreman and Stew’s right-hand man, wouldn’t see his boss until noon the following day. Not that Stew wouldn’t return before then. He would visit the site later than he expected—around midnight—bloodied and under the cover of darkness.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like?” answered Stew, dropping a heavy rubber mallet on top of a metal post.

  Pam stood on the front porch, arms crossed, searching the recesses of her psyche for some explanation as to why her husband was posting a For Sale by Owner sign on their front lawn.

  “For sale?”

  “Taking too big of a hit on the job. Twenty Gs just to dig out and re-pour the foundations.”

  “You’re not selling our house.”

  “No?”

  Done with the mallet, Stew moved on to the bolts, fixing the red-and-white sign to the post. The spaces for price and contact numbers had yet to be filled in.

  “Maybe you didn’t hear me. We are not selling—”

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

  Stew’s color was pink and flush, a vein pushing the skin up from his neck. The last time Pam saw that vein bulge she had found herself in the emergency room with a broken jaw. The admitting nurse took one look at her and asked if she wanted to file a police report. Pam never wavered nor broke eye contact, softly answering, “No.”

  “You off the Program?”

  “No. But you keep peppering me with questions and I’ll sure as shit go bust me a couple drinks.”

  “I don’t want you drinking.”

  “Neither do I. Guess that makes us even.”

  Pam took a single step toward Stew, off the porch and onto the walk.

  “I want to talk about this.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I love you and would like things to slow down. Just for a sec.”

  Stew dropped a bolt into the heavy grass. He bent down slowly searching for the silvery doughnut amongst the healthy blades of Marathon sod. It appeared to have vanished into the earth.

  “Fuck.”

  “Stew?”

  Stew lifted his eyes and looked at his wife for the very first time that day. To Pam it felt as if he was staring right through her. As if she wasn’t flesh and blood, standing fifteen feet away.

  His eyes, though, appeared clear and not dilated.

  “You’re selling our house.”

  “Make it simple, Pam,” breathed Stew, his volume lowered to a notch above a whisper. “You go out and sell twenty large worth of your ass? Think that’s about twenty high-class blowjobs for high-class dough? You can keep our house.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Like that’s gonna happen today.”

  “Apologize, asshole.”

  “Asshole? You just called me an asshole?”

  “Dickhead. Cockweed. Shitferbrains.”

  Pam had her limits. And using the past against her was worth the fight. Even if he killed her this time.

  “You gonna hit me? Go ahead, you fathead fuck!”

  “Now, who’s pissed off?”

  “I am!” barked Pam.

  Stew straightened and held his arms out in sudden surrender. At worst, he was amused. When Pam got mad it was damn funny to him.

  “Honey. Listen to me. I can’t make the vig on the loan unless we get some cash flow. No bank’s gonna give us a third hump on the house. Only option we got is to get liquid for six months so I can finish. After, I promise, I’ll buy you a bigger house in a better neighborhood.”

  “But I like our neighborhood.”

  “Right here, then. Bigger house right here.”

  Pam’s arms were wrapped tightly around herself. And though she was shaking her head, it was more in disapproval than disagreement.

  Stew took three steps nearer and then, a deep and cleansing breath. His normal skin color had returned and the bulging vein no longer appeared ready to explode.

  “Bigger house, you know? Real family home.”

  “With a proper nursery?”

  “With a proper nursery,” answered Stew.

  “No other options? We can’t find twenty thousand anywhere else?”

  “Unless you want me to rob a bank or something,” joked Stew, limping the final few steps until she was in his arms, continuing to feign indifference.

  “Cars are leased, babe. This house is our only real asset.”

  “Why couldn’t you have just kept doing remodels?”

  “Hey. That ugly skeleton in Studio City is our future.”

  “Our family’s future.”

  Pam released her arms and let them wrap around her husband. She pressed her head into his chest and listened to his heart thump. If he had lied to her and had been drugging or drinking, his heart rate would be elevated. Pam counted six seconds and did the quick math. Seventy heartbeats per minute. Stew was sober.

  Sober forever? Or for now?

  “Did you get my text?” she asked.

  “What text?”

  “Christ. Is your phone even on?”

  Jack ’n’ Coke.

  “I’ll pour,” growled Stew.

  The bartender left a double shot of Jack Daniels in a tumbler full of ice beside a second glass of Coca Cola. Stew had always liked it served that way. Seeing the soda pop fizz over the rocks of ice, the bubbles swirling within the liquor.

  “Sugar and sin,” he called it.

  Ten years of sobriety were about to be smashed in a single gesture. All Stew had to do was lift the heavenly mash to his lips and sip. Instead, he let the tumbler sit there on the Outback Steakhouse bar. He ordered dinner off the bar menu and mustered some brief interest in the Sports Center updates on the pair of televisions flanking the triple-high shelves of booze.

  “You should join the Carpenters Union,” pressed the bearded drunk on the stool next to him.
The man was fifty, bleary-eyed, and after getting a snort full of contractors’ woes from Stew, had decided the best solution was for Stew to work as a construction dog on movie sets.

  “High pay, easy hours.”

  Stew listened, but his eyes kept wandering to the Jack and Coke, full to the brim, but with fewer bubbles by the second.

  “I know some fellahs. Young and experienced enough. Think they’d like you. Work swing on a couple of shows and bingo, you’re in. Did I tell you the Union pays benefits? Health and dental, baby. Gonna keep my teeth ’til I’m ninety.”

  On any other day, Stew would have told the man to shut the fuck up. But distraction was key. For one, it kept his mind off his wife. With a great deal of self-control, Stew had curbed his anger and refrained from breaking her neck. He had even feigned affection when he was feeling nothing but rage.

  “Something else about working movie construction. When you’re building shit, ain’t none of those pansy show-biz fags around. ’Cept maybe a production designer. But they come as fast as they go. By the time the cameras show up, we’re on our stools, drinkin’ our pay.”

  By the time Stew dug into his Bloomin’ Onion and medium-rare rib eye, he had moved on to ignoring the blathering, show-biz hammerhead. He had assumed a prison posture, elbows on the table, arms circling his meal protectively.

  The Jack and Coke remained untouched. All the fizz that was left was clinging to the shrinking cubes of ice.

  Stew followed the meal with a pile of vanilla ice cream melting over the top of a steaming-hot chocolate brownie. A trio of college girls from Cal State Northridge was so taken with the looks of the dessert they considered ordering it themselves.

  “Does it go down as good as it looks?” asked the freckled redhead, boldly swinging her swelling chest in Stew’s direction.

  Stew made a quick calculation.

  She’d probably fuck me in the bathroom.

  His straightened back and impish grin garnered giggles from the other two coeds. He let the trio measure him. He had had two women at once. Never three, to the best of his recollection. And college girls. That might be worth the marital infraction.

  But inside, Stew still raged at Pam. Damn her for questioning my judgment—if even for a moment. And damn her for extorting a promise of a bigger house. With a proper nursery, for Christ’s sake!

  “Whatcha drinkin’ with the brownie thingy?” asked the redhead.

  “Jack and Coke.”

  “Mmmm,” she replied. “Man’s drink.”

  She didn’t know shit, thought Stew. So what? She was young and willing, which meant her opinion was only as good as what she had between her legs.

  “We’re drinking...”

  She had already had a few too many and had already forgotten. She turned to her compadres for assistance.

  “Red Headed Slut!” chirped the short brunette, wearing jeans purchased before she had added on her freshman fifteen.

  “That the name of a drink? Or a description your friend?” asked Stew, who was rewarded with a trio of willing giggles.

  “Jäger, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice,” answered the third girl, who was tall. Stew pegged her as the designated purse watcher. But he could tell by her pupils that she was also the drunkest, and when it came time to throw down, would probably be voted most likely to call him “daddy.”

  Turn you ass side up and you wouldn’t say no.

  Then the phone on his belt buzzed.

  “That your girlfriend?” snipped the redhead.

  Stupidly, Stew checked his phone. There, in bold letters against an aqua blue screen read a text message from Pam: CLD U PLZ BRING HOME 1 GLN NF MILK?

  The text was punctuated by a yellow, smiley face emoticon.

  Stew’s anger swelled, his quiet rage turning his skin pink again. And that tell-all vein rose in his neck like an erection under tight denim.

  For the trio of college women, the battle between instinct and alcohol was over in a heartbeat. Each of them quietly recoiled as dots of sweat bloomed on Stew’s forehead while he stared unendingly at the text. Quiet nods were exchanged, handbags desperately clutched, and each of the coeds excused herself to the ladies’ room.

  “Cunts,” groused Stew under his breath.

  Then there was that jar of Jack and Coke, with the ice all but melted and the fizz diffused into the atmosphere. The drink found its way into Stew’s grip. He could have crushed the glass, cut himself good and stopped his own madness from taking over. But it didn’t happen that way. The cocktail touched his lips, slipped over his gums, and Stew swallowed. Gone were the years of sobriety, the promises, the amends to new and old associates.

  Stew Raymo was officially off the wagon.

  “Set me up again,” demanded Stew, slapping the glass to the bar.

  “Double shot?” asked the bartender.

  “Four. Highball glass.”

  “You got it.”

  And with each gulp that followed, Stew remembered the times he drank Jack and Coke to get drunk and the times he merely used it to wash back handfuls of prescription narcotics. “The buzz and the after-buzz,” he called it. It was all about the soda, sin, and see-what-the-hell-happens-next. Sometimes it was sex. Sometimes it was crime.

  And sometimes it was murder.

  By the time Stew settled into the seat of his pickup, raindrops were forming on the windshield. He kicked over the engine, turned on the wiper blades, then decided to recheck his phone for voicemails. The mix of Jack and Coke pumping through him felt warm and comfortable, all his angst momentarily eased by the booze. So when the first thing he read on his phone was Pam’s last text, the venom never rose past a rehearsed apology.

  CLD U PLZ BRING HOME 1 GLN NF MILK?

  The wiper blades erased another sheet of raindrops. As Stew flicked on his headlamps, the beams landed squarely on the car parked opposite him.

  A silver Lexus GS sedan.

  Without any predictive thought, Stew popped his door and slid from the pickup, rotating clockwise across the parking lot and to his left until the Lexus’ license plate came into his view. Stew checked it against the text sent by his wife earlier in the day.

  The text he had ignored.

  SILVER LEXUS 5HJR8429

  There was no mistake. The tags matched.

  Stew approached, more deliberate than bold. He remembered that about liquor. It stripped the rage and left him with a cozy feeling of omnipotence. Like Superman with a slightly malevolent side. Just don’t piss off a man in tights.

  The Lexus sedan was empty. The doors locked. Stew turned in place, doing a quick scan of the parking lot. The sprinkling of rain had left the tops of all the cars looking sparkling and new. Stew spotted a pair of aging Outback diners, one digging in her purse for keys. But they didn’t seem to be heading toward the Lexus.

  These guys weren’t stalking Pam. Otherwise, why would they be following me? Then again, if they were following me, then where the hell were they? Still inside the steakhouse? Must be, thought Stew.

  Then came the sudden urge for another round of Jack and Coke. With the push of a button, Stew locked his truck and set his bearings to return to the Outback.

  6

  GONZO DROVE IN circles. Four full revolutions around Ben’s neighborhood, daring herself to drive up his cul de sac, park in front of his house, and ring the doorbell. The courage, though, wasn’t coming. So she kept making right turns at nearly identical stoplights at nearly identical corners. Four times four times four times four. So many times, she had lost count. The only true gauges of how long she had been driving the square route were the clicks on the odometer and the gas her Chevy Suburban was guzzling.

  If only the safety nut would return my call, she thought.

  The hilly neighborhood was still Simi Valley. Just not Gonzo’s Simi Valley. Ben’s zip code had vistas, more square feet per house, and just about everything was newer—from the gutters to the trim paint, while Gonzo’s streets sprung from an older development g
rid on the valley floor. Humble homes, cracked sidewalks, and a quantum leap more affordable to the dual-income cop families who had made the city famous.

  Gonzo wondered if her worry about ringing the doorbell was nothing more than a class thing.

  With her umpteenth right turn, she tried revising her speech, thinking the right sequence of sentences would explain her surprise visit to what she supposed was an already tense household.

  I’ve heard the stupid rumors, she thought she would begin. Stupid as in wrong. Stupid as in small-minded. Stupid as in I hope it hasn’t caused you any undue grief.

  The word had gotten to Gonzo through, of all people, Travis, her kindergarten boy. At afternoon pick-up, he had climbed into the backseat of her car and breathlessly announced that he had already met his future daddy: Betsy’s daddy. And that Carly’s mom had told Carly that Betsy’s daddy and Betsy’s mom were going to get a divorce so that his mommy could marry Betsy’s daddy.

  It was an earful of trouble.

  Gonzo’s heart had turned sick, despite her logical side excusing the talk as silly shit six-year-olds say. But where on God’s earth would a six-year-old get the notion without first hearing it from a parent?

  Before approaching Carly’s mom, whom Gonzo barely knew, she decided the best investigation was through the kindergarten teacher. Gonzo pulled her aside during a lunch-hour visit.

  “Unvarnished,” said Gonzo. “I need to know what’s being said so I can undo it.”

  Uncomfortable, the wise old marm wearing a sweater hand-knit from neon-colored yarn and appearing as if she had stepped right out of a beauty shop and into the classroom, answered in the most politic way.

  “Kids this age repeat what they hear from their moms and dads.”

  “But you’ve heard it,” pressed Gonzo.

  “Ms. Gonzalez—”

  “Lydia... please.”

  “Fine. Lydia. Let me put it this way. You wouldn’t be the first single mother who a jealous parent started a rumor about. Mr. Keller is an attractive man. Please. I’m old enough to be his mom and I’ve noticed that there’s... something about him?”

  Gonzo could only sigh her response.

  “So there’s talk.”