Dark City Lights

by Lawrence Block

  NOT ALIK. ALIK CAN LISTEN to your questions, answer them, guide you to your best look. And if some world events hold your interest, the football game or the latest terrorist action, Alik can offer an opinion on that, too. When the Muslims beheaded those journalists, Alik frowned—why torture? If you have to kill, if your interests demand that, fine, do it, quick, no need for the rest. No need to make a man suffer. And the heads frowned right along with him. Perhaps only one in ten would even wonder if Alik was speaking from experience. Perhaps one in one hundred would know by the expression on his face that he was.

  Here’s something that would surprise Viktor: Alik agrees. It is business. But on the nature of the transaction—that is where they would disagree, were they to discuss it. Which they don’t. Alik does what he does, and his chair remains filled from nine in the morning until, sometimes, seven thirty at night. Viktor just cuts and, when his chair is not filled, he stews.

  But not Wednesdays. Wednesdays, there is no Alik. Wednesdays are different. Wednesdays, Viktor cuts at Alik’s chair, while Andrei, who is first cousin to both though brother to neither, cuts at Viktor’s. Wednesdays are also different because the folding chairs outside, while still getting use, sit empty sometimes, and the heads waiting barely have time to open their newspapers or unlock their iPads before they are moving inside to let Viktor put shears to them.

  This lack of traffic is mostly Andrei’s loss. On Wednesday, the heads get no choice of barber chair. If Viktor’s is empty, it must be filled before Andrei’s. But Andrei is young, and his needs are simple, enough to buy exactly the amount of vodka it takes to slow him down a little in bed, without softening his chlen. So he cuts whichever heads happen to park themselves in his chair, barely thinking about anything other than the feeling he’ll have when the cash is in his wallet and the alcohol about to hit his belly.

  On Wednesday, Viktor arrives even earlier than usual. Chairs out. Broom moving across the floor. The shop is his today. It is his shop. And an actual smile breaks out across his face.

  As he’s placing the broom back into the far corner, he hears the front door open, turns, and that smile doesn’t fade, it disappears, as quickly as it arrived. His cousin Andrei is not walking in. Alik is.

  “But it’s Wednesday, Alik.”

  “Andrei sent the text. Sick.”

  “But it’s Wednesday.”

  “It’s fine.”

  By this Alik means, it’s fine that I have to work today, don’t worry about me. I’ll take next Wednesday and maybe a Friday, if Andrei can fill in. But Viktor isn’t worried about Alik. And as much as Alik understands about people, as much as his instinct has served him, this time he misses it. Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely.

  Viktor nods. That’s all. And begins organizing his station. Alik begins doing the same.

  It’s not that Viktor doesn’t like Alik. Of course he likes him. Respects him, too. But that does not change the fact that Wednesday is ruined. Which means the week is ruined. And who ruined it? Alik.

  Viktor takes his sharpest scissors out of the blue disinfectant, shakes them off, and takes half a step—the chairs are that close, remember—and he plunges them in between Alik’s shoulder blades.

  Or aims there, anyway. By the time the blade has reached Alik, he has sensed his cousin’s approach, seen the quick movement in the mirror and begun to turn, so the scissors cut Alik’s left bicep, but don’t really penetrate and are knocked to the ground. Viktor shoots his knee up, toward Alik’s groin, but Alik raises his leg, blocking it, while reaching back, grabbing his own scissors and jamming them into Viktor’s liver.

  Viktor falls, moaning, thick dark blood begins to pool around him. Alik looks at his watch. The heads are going to start showing up soon. Viktor moans louder. “Tishe,” Alik says, and kicks Viktor in the face. Viktor shuts up, as he’s told, lies there shuddering. Grabs for the scissors in his side.

  “Don’t. Leave them. You’ll bleed out.”

  If he thought about it, Viktor might be surprised to know Alik’s breathing hasn’t changed, his heart hasn’t begun to beat faster. But Viktor isn’t thinking about anything besides the pain.

  Alik goes outside, brings down the grate, slides under it, brings it the rest of the way down.

  Inside, it feels like night.

  As his pupils adjust, Alik admits it: he’s never liked Viktor. Never respected him. But Viktor is family. So he took him in, gave him a living. He allows himself to picture their grandmother, how she kept photos of the three of them, Alik, Viktor, and Andrei on her mantle, how proud of them she was, in business in New York City, with lines out front waiting. And all three together.

  But she’s still in Kazakhstan. He’s here. The heads are out there, waiting, some sitting, some standing, all wondering when the grate will open. This is his business, his life.

  And it’s wrong to make a man suffer. If you have to kill, if it’s in your interest . . .

  Alik rolls the barely conscious Viktor onto his back, then yanks the scissors out of his cousin’s side. Blood begins spilling across the floor, mixing with the hair that the broom can never quite wipe away. Without hesitation, Alik, gathering all the force he can muster, rams the point of the blades into Viktor’s left eye, through it, and into the younger man’s brain. A quick spasm and it’s over.

  Alik takes a moment. Watches close. When he’s certain Viktor is dead, he exhales. The shop feels small to him, tight, but he knows this is adrenaline, panic, and he allows it to come for a few seconds before forcing it away.

  He glances at the grate. He can feel them outside, waiting, wondering, reading their iPads, iPhones, and newspapers, but he can’t do anything for them now. Nor they for him.

  So he sits in his chair and breathes. Then his mind begins to work. You don’t open three successful salons in Almaty and one barber shop in New York City without the ability to think clearly no matter the situation. This is a difficult spot. But it isn’t the first difficult spot he’s found himself in. And, although he doesn’t yet know how, he’s going to make sure it won’t be the last.

  WET DOG ON A RAINY DAY

  BY S. J. ROZAN

  A HEAVY, MOIST SMELL, A faint rancid bite at the back of her throat, but it’s always like that. Worse today, perhaps, because of this rain in this heat, but when is it not worse, really? That would mean better. It’s never better.

  Snuffling, scrabbling, and both dogs are up on the lumpy floor-flat mattress, panting, wet noses painting her, nails scratching, tails waving. How do they know when she’s awake? Neil never had. Neil would so-silently tiptoe, shut the bathroom door before the light, before the water, caring and careful so she could sleep. Anna would lie pretending, lying, loving the warmth of his concern while the bed grew cold. Once or twice she’d stretched, reached out, but he’d whispered, No, no, Panda Bear, you should sleep, and he’d gone out and left her because it was her time to sleep.

  Anna never put it into words, how desolate this basement became, the heavy dread, how she had to fight to get out of bed, unbury herself, get going. She walked both dogs—Neil didn’t want to go out, in, out again, it would wake her—and she had coffee, and then she stood before an unfinished canvas and wanted to die. Every morning, wanted to die.

  Neil said that’s what made the artist: fear, doubt, knowing it could all fall apart, it might turn out not worth it. But (kissing her forehead) she had to try, they had to try, because that’s who they were, that’s what it was for them. And it was a gift, this pain, this need to create, it made them not like everyone else. He went out each morning to write, sitting among everyone else, endless cups of coffee in the diner. Smells like bacon and burgers, anyway, he said. Kind of yucky, even for me. You, you don’t eat meat, you have such a sensitive vegan tummy. You’d barf. He gave her a gentle smile. You need to be alone, to have space. Your work needs it. But Anna yearned to be surrounded, too, by waitresses and fi
rst dates, nurses off the night shift and commuters grabbing takeout before they grabbed the train to the ferry to a bigger life in the other New York.

  Some days, not a streak or a spot of new paint on the canvas, she’s glad when the day grows late, when the basement is layered in muddy gray shadows. She puts on her polyester smock and heads to Gristede’s, to the dead-end job that pays the rent. There are people there, lights and movement. They each have a job like that, she and Neil. Until we make it, Panda Bear. She’d thought she might teach, work with kids, but Neil said anything that pulled her creative force away from painting would be a tragedy.

  She pushes the sheet off, stands, scratches the ears of the dogs, Leo and Molly. They’re both frantically wagging, climbing over each other to be closest to her. Molly steps back, she always does, happy to let Leo win. Happy just to be with him, and her. And Neil, but not Neil anymore. When Neil left he said he’d come for Leo soon, for Leo and some tools, things of his from the storage room. Anna brushes her teeth, sifts through a mound of shirts for one less musty than the others, clips on the leashes, leaves the basement through the creaking door.

  She holds an umbrella, which means both leashes in one hand, so she’s not surprised when Leo lunges, tears away. Neither is old man Shinn, watching from the window. He does that, watches for her, for Leo on the loose, for people he doesn’t know, for anyone he wishes away from this bleak block in this sad town barely hanging onto the far ass-end of Staten Island.

  Old man Shinn is on his porch now, cursing her, cursing Leo, cursing the world and while Anna hates him she doesn’t blame him. Leo comes bounding back when she calls, eager to share the joy of rain, of freedom, of old man Shinn’s trash, spread now in the street. Just like a dog! the old man screams, and of course he’s right, because Leo’s a dog. Without a word, even a look, she ties the dogs to a lamppost and gathers the garbage, redeposits it in the can Leo knocked over. She’s done it before because he’s done it before. If old man Shinn got a can that locked they wouldn’t have to do this dance, his acid screaming and her garbage-smeared hands, but he won’t. She’s so tired.

  Neil met Stacia at the diner. While he sweated out a story she bled out a poem; he put it that way. They recognized each other, their tribal affiliation—he put it that way, too—and started to talk, to commiserate. Natural and mutual support, at the start, that’s all it was, he swore. In the afternoons he’d go off to work at the cabinet shop, his dead end, and he never thought about Stacia while he sawed and glued and hammered. Until he did.

  Neil was honest with Anna. He always was. When he said, Panda Bear, I never slept with her, she believed him. Then he left her so he could.

  He worried about the rent, her rent now, and he tucked money in the cookie jar for next month, until Anna could get more shifts at Gristede’s. And the car, that would stay here, too, until he found a cheap place to park it up near Stacia’s apartment. Stacia lived near the ferry, as close to the bigger New York as you could get without leaving the island. In a condo, on the water. Why had she ever come down to the diner, fluorescent lights, and scratched the formica at the sad far end? Neil said she said, It’s real. Not like where she lived, not like the people she knew. Probably she did say that; Neil was honest, and Anna never met her.

  Rain’s soaked through her shoes by the time she unlocks the door. The smell’s worse. The canvas, blues and grays and murky browns, hasn’t changed in a week. Leo and Molly slip and slide in filthy happiness across the curling linoleum, roll in wet bliss on the blankets, to dry off. Wet dog. Old pizza. Mold. The new, strong stench. Anna goes into the bathroom and vomits.

  The only thing she takes time to do after she straightens up is wash her face. She stuffs the money from the cookie jar in her jeans. Wallet and car keys, what else is there? She clips the leashes on, takes the dogs out to the car. Usually they go through the storage room in the back to reach the driveway but not today. They scramble in, Leo in the front, as always. When Neil used to drive, and Anna sat in the front, Leo sat in her lap. Molly swept her tail happily along the back seat.

  From this sorry town, clinging to a soggy, slippery seacoast the bigger New York doesn’t remember it owns, she has to drive north to the city’s southernmost bridge. Now she knows that should have told her everything. Just before the bridge she pulls over. Leaving the car idling, she grabs Leo’s leash and fast-walks through sheets of rain to the animal shelter door. I can’t handle this, she says. She drops the leash and bolts. She’s in the car and peeling away by the time the guy has raced out from behind the desk and through the doors. In the mirror she sees him with the leash, sees Leo with his cocked head, getting smaller, watching her. Molly’s standing in the seat, looking through the back window. She whines.

  Anna slides the car onto the on-ramp, slices through traffic, heading out of here, heading west. Molly! she says. With emphasis, with anger. Molly’s whining stops. Molly, Anna repeats. Come here. Nothing. Come here. In the front. The dog stays where she is. Molly, come.

  Tentatively, Molly worms between the front seats, clawing her way onto where Leo was. She sniffs, whines again. Quiet, says Anna. Molly curls morosely on the front seat, burrows into Leo’s scent. Anna stares ahead, seeing the road, watching the windshield wipers. She bites her lip and blots out the sad, scared look on Leo’s face as he stood with the shelter guy, so exactly like Neil’s look when he turned in the storage room and there she stood, Anna, her, with the costly carving knife he’d been so excited about, the knife he’d been so eager to share the joy of owning, even though she doesn’t eat meat.

  WHY I TOOK THE JOB

  BY PETER HOCHSTEIN

  THERE WERE MICE IN THE garbage.

  The lady who is the entire staff and management of Manhattan Typing Services Unlimited, the business that occupies the cubicle next to mine, pointed them out to me. Somebody had taken the previous day’s garbage and stacked it in a couple of heavyweight green plastic garbage bags, sealed at the top with wire ties. The bags were leaning on the wall next to the service elevator. The janitor hadn’t come yet to collect them. Inside one of the bags, several oblong shapes were wiggling, evidently feasting on a takeout lunch somebody had discarded the day before.

  “Mice!” she said.

  “This place is a dump,” I agreed.

  “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  I pay $475 a month for a cubicle here. “Here” is a real estate entity that is euphemistically but officially named “Success Deluxe Workplaces.” The truth is, the place is a dump of an office suite, full of people who are either not yet successful or who will always be less than successful. Some are total flops waiting to happen.

  Success Deluxe Workplaces is on the ninth floor of a decaying former dress factory. The building is on a grungy-looking block in the Garment District, in the West Thirties, just off Eighth Avenue. In the building next door there’s a gypsy fortune teller who each morning puts out a misspelled sign on a sidewalk sandwich board. The sign says, “Tarot cart reading $5 Speical.” If she’s so good at knowing the future, how come the spirits didn’t tell her that people would notice she can’t spell? Most of the other storefronts belong to wholesalers of women’s garments, some carrying rather nice merchandise, but some cheesy looking, some frumpy looking, some a little too overtly sexy. I swear, one of them ought to stop calling itself “Mindy’s Evening Wear” and rename itself “The Hooker Supply House.”

  My cubicle is wedged into a space too small for a grown man to fully stretch out his arms. For my $475 a month rent I get a desktop, one lockable cabinet, a two-drawer file, a Wi-Fi Internet connection, and a phone, along with occasional use of a conference room. Plus there’s a tall willowy receptionist, a blonde with blue eyes and dimples who barely speaks English. Her name is Krystyna, and three months ago she was still living with her parents in Gdansk, Poland. She answers the phone, “Sooksess Delox Vorkplaces.” I will admit her accent sounds sexy.

  The men’s room is filthy. One of the toilets frequently bac
ks up. You don’t want to know about the smell in there. The passenger elevators often don’t work, so the tenants of Success Deluxe Workplaces frequently ride the service elevators with the bagged mice or climb eight flights of stairs when the service elevator is also down. My cubicle neighbors, in addition to the middle-aged, dyed-blonde typing lady, include a woman who puts out an Internet publication called Stocking and Lingerie News; somebody who describes herself as a “job coach”; an employment agent specializing in low-end hospital jobs like transporter and janitor; an unemployed advertising copywriter getting by on freelance assignments; and more of the other usual suspects you find in New York rent-a-work-space dumps—a collection of less-than-stellar lawyers, accountants, bookkeepers, software programmers, people peddling iffy investment schemes, and struggling insurance and printing salesmen.

  Around the edges of the huge room are private offices with windows. Those rent for triple to quadruple what the cubicles go for, depending on what the landlord thinks he can get away with. Whenever you negotiate the rent with him (and you have to keep negotiating the rent because he keeps trying to raise it) he tells you, “Look, I’ll settle with you this time, but don’t tell any of the other people, because you are getting this cheaper than all the rest of them.”

  Right, and I am the Queen of England.

  The private office occupants are mostly lawyers who are actually making what passes for a living, the majority of them either by bilking poor immigrants for their last five hundred dollars before they get deported, or making sure that divorcing lower-middle-class couples emerge from their split mutually dead broke while the lawyers pocket their former joint bank accounts. We once had an entrepreneur in one of the offices who said he was running a modeling agency. All kinds of pretty women walked in and out of there. No, he wasn’t a pimp. Pimping would be too classy for a dump like Success Deluxe Workplaces. But one day the cops arrived with drawn guns, went into the model agent’s office, pulled him out with his hands cuffed behind his back, under arrest for statutory rape. It turned out one of his models was fourteen years old and played “Casting Couch” with him. I hear that when the case came to court, his defense was that she told him she was thirty-seven. You can’t make this stuff up.