All-Day Breakfast

by Adam Lewis Schroeder

  “Fair enough,” I smiled. “Who might I ask about the contracts the company carried with the US military?”

  “Hey!” The clipboard woman grabbed my arm. “They’re radioing you! Get to your vehicle!”

  “Oh. On what channel?” A bona fide question, I thought.

  “Channel nine—how did you get called in if you weren’t on nine?”

  “Well, I had been on nine, but—”

  Clipboard put her hands on her hips. The woman with pearls narrowed her eyes as she reopened her phone. I turned and jogged back up the driveway. What had my entire undercover operation uncovered? Penzler himself lived in the area, which might’ve meant “in Ohio.” And what would he know? Guy probably played tennis and signed the odd letter. I needed a research guy with a beaker in his hand, but he and the beaker had probably had their molecules combined. I should’ve asked for the mailing addresses of all secret labs.

  Holmes, the freckled cop, stood beside my ambulance as I hurried up. The other vehicles had gone. Who are all these people in the back? she was going to ask.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Finn took your call.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay then. I was helping out down in the tent. Doctors were asking me what had happened here, as if I would know!”

  “You must have that kind of face,” she said. “People always ask you for directions?”

  “Yeah, they do!”

  I bounded up into my seat. I hadn’t been so enthusiastic about anything since the kids were babies, not even feigned enthusiasm, but I’d figured I needed a new tack. And Holmes was the cutest cop in the world if that wasn’t too condescending an assessment. The ambulance was so quiet that I wondered whether they’d gone on a reconnaissance mission of their own. I grinned and lifted a handful of bacon out of the mixing bowl between the seats.

  “You want some?” I asked.

  “You have Nebraska plates,” said Holmes.

  “Oh, of course!” I imagined I was Clint in mid-improvisation on the theater sports stage. “It’s the driver exchange!”

  “Who’d you exchange with, somebody here?”

  “Oh, I don’t know yet. I was just pulling in off 33 when I got this call!”

  “But where are you staying?”

  “They said to find the motel and they’d call me there. There aren’t many motels, are there?”

  “No,” said Holmes, “just the one.”

  A gigantic fire engine purred up the exit driveway and out onto 91a. The driver nodded at me and patted the outside of his door, just like they’d done in Hoover.

  “If you’re done here,” I offered, “why don’t I run you into town?”

  Because maybe she’d feel like talking. She nodded, but then wandered around to the front of my ambulance and murmured into her radio while she looked down at my license plate. Then she holstered the walkie-talkie and climbed in.

  “Seat belt,” I told her. “Such a treat to have a passenger who’s not in shock.”

  This last bit was to discourage my other passengers, if they were even back there, from staging Oklahoma!

  “This seat’s so warm,” said Holmes.

  “You must have got a cold bum, standing out in the cold!”

  I turned right onto the road. Fifty yards ahead the fire truck had pulled over and the driver stood beside the ditch as he was interviewed by the tv-news people. He waved his arms as though miming large explosions.

  “He’ll catch hell from Penzler,” said Holmes.

  “How’s that?”

  “Old Man Penzler put a gag order on everybody working the site. He throws his weight around this county like you wouldn’t believe, but you’ll see that by the end of your first shift.”

  “Ah, he must be the one they were mentioning.” I lifted my eyebrows and swayed my head, peering at the ditches on either side of the road like the glorious act of driving was all that my mind really had room for. “Must not be a union shop, if he didn’t even come down to lend a hand. Where’s the guy live exactly?”

  “Just out of town.”

  “Probably some fancy neighborhood,” I muttered.

  “No, that’s the weird thing—he’s out on McCauley.” She waved a hand vaguely over her shoulder, which meant east of town if I had my compass properly aligned. “I had the honor of driving his daughters home one night, even the one who can still walk. But I guess it wasn’t too pretty when their mom died, that might be part of their problem.”

  “Uh-huh. This morning he must’ve been making them breakfast,” I said. “What kind of house does a big executive like that live in? Just out of curiosity.”

  “Rambling, I guess you’d call it. Seemed like there were a lot of little buildings.”

  I figured that asking for the exact address would be too much.

  “Pink marble or something?” I asked as I peered up the road, as if the conversation didn’t have any relevance for me or the people riding in the back.

  “No, no, just wooden. White. Why do you ask?”

  “You have a lot of family in Preston?”

  “Just my sister and her kids,” she said. “You have a suitcase and stuff in the back? How long you staying again?”

  “Fourteen days.”

  “That’s not long.”

  “It’s a pilot project.”

  Mobile home parks huddled on either side of the highway.

  “I guess your sister’s kids will want to know all about what happened out there.”

  “No,” said Holmes, “it’s their mom that’ll want to know. She works the deli counter and she needs to know everything. I was just talking to the captain, but I can’t pass a word of it along to Susan.”

  I slowed down for a school zone even though it was Saturday.

  “Pass what along?” I asked quietly.

  “Well, they’ve confirmed arson.” She took off her cap to scratch above her ear. Her hair was in a French braid. “The jumpsuit guys found incendiary devices, something like twenty-five of them. Went off at seven-thirty when only the insane keeners were at their desks. Horrible.”

  Incendiary devices. No wonder it had reminded me of my own house—but why would Penzler do to themselves what they’d done to me?

  “Poor suckers,” she said. “As if writing up one more memo about plastic couldn’t have waited until Monday. Should’ve been home watching cartoons!”

  You can guess which two people that got me thinking about.

  “And that was all he said?” I murmured. “Your captain?”

  “Some people aren’t as forthcoming as we’d like.” She put her cap back on. “Here’s your motel.”

  “Nah, I’ll drive you to your station.”

  “Pull in, I want to see that you get checked in.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Look, I’ll happily do anything before I have to start knocking on doors to tell people their husbands and wives just died, all right? Humor me.”

  She got out and walked across to the Lamplighter Motel’s front door, its gold lettering faded from too much sun.

  “Be right back, ambulance,” I said flatly. “See you in a minute.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Clint’s hand giving the A-OK sign—man, his thumb had reattached just seamlessly.

  With Holmes I strode across the cramped lobby to the front desk, trying to make myself as attractive a prospective guest as possible, though I’d seen my reflection in the office door and realized I still had black patches around my eyes like a robber in a kindergarten play. I smiled up at the potted palms and the brass clock tacked to a piece of driftwood.

  “Single room, please. Be staying fourteen nights to start. You have any kind of limit on length of stay?”

  “No, sir!” The woman behind the counter left off watering a spider plant and slid
the register in front of me. “Sign in, if you please.”

  She was that long-nosed, eyebrowless sort of woman that winds up as either a drunk or a basket-weaver but seldom both. She stood picking lint off her cardigan. A lanky boy with braces, probably twelve years old, sat beside her with his feet propped on the edge of a drawer, drawing a fairly intricate Frankenstein on an Etch A Sketch—Frankenstein’s monster, to be accurate. Everything his creator’s fault. I wrote Rory McAvoy, Hoover, Nebraska in the register.

  “You drive the ambulance?” the boy asked.

  “Yes, son, I do.”

  “Chad,” said the woman, “he’s entitled to some privacy.”

  “Cool,” he nodded, as though she hadn’t said a word.

  Holmes knocked me with her elbow. “Everything kosher with this guy, Ange?”

  “Joanie!” the woman smiled. “Didn’t see you step in!”

  “You might get busy,” said Holmes. “Terrible business down at Penzler, terrible. Lot of out-of-towners’ll come zooming in.”

  “Oh, I didn’t want to ask you.” Ange shook her head. “I reckoned I’d find out all about it on the CNN. They just called and booked three rooms.”

  “My friend Hunter’s dad works there,” said Chad, screwing the cap back on his orange juice. “But he never goes in Saturday—he says working weekends will lead you to the grave!”

  “Sickening.” Ange offered me a key dangling on a cork. “Here you are, Mr. McAvoy, you’re in 17.”

  “Should I park it around the side?” I asked. “Sometimes there’s a minor panic when people see an ambulance out front.”

  “Well, 17 is around the side.”

  Smart-ass! I figured I could grab the Etch A Sketch and knock her and Chad cold in all of three seconds, even with that gun strapped to Holmes’s hip, but that would erase poor Frankenstein. Frankenstein’s monster.

  “I should be getting a call from dispatch,” I said. “I guess the hospital—”

  “If Gabe calls I’ll put him through. Help with his bags, Chad.”

  The kid loped around to the door and held it open for us.

  “So, I guess you’re set,” said Holmes. “Now I can go tell Nestor Solomon his wife’s passed away. Lucky me.”

  “Oh, no,” I said, my hand on the ambulance’s door latch—and for a second I saw this poor Nestor Solomon on his doorstep, squinting hard at Holmes before his face crumpled. Grabbing the doorjamb to hold himself up. Their empty kitchen with her egg-streaked plate still in the sink. I knew what Nestor Solomon’s future held, though with Lydia we’d at least had those weeks when we’d known she was going and could talk about it. Nestor just had Holmes on his doorstep, he—

  I’d hit the fucker so hard he’d fly through the back of his house, wind up like a smashed watermelon!

  “Just down by the school—I’ll walk,” said Holmes. “I might check on you later.”

  She turned across the parking lot, and I didn’t say a thing after her. She really was cute as hell, with really wiry-looking hands, I loved that, and terrific as it would be to screw her, staring down at her sweaty forehead as I gave it to her, I didn’t want to find myself knocking her block off if she happened to fart. I sounded like Amber sitting on Cam Vincent’s desk. And what was the point in giving us any urge to reproduce in the first place? Very sorry, Lydia, my brain tried to say.

  Our ambulance smelled more like sawdust than I’d realized.

  “G,” Clint asked through the window, “are you going to have sex with the police?”

  “Five dollars says yes!” hissed Franny.

  “How’d you like a ride straight back to Rob?” whispered Colleen.

  Mom was getting tough. I drove around the building and backed into the space in front of 17.

  “You wait for me to let you out,” I said to the ambulance. “You do not move.”

  “Carry your bags in, mister?” asked Chad.

  He leaned against the room’s green door, his hands pressed behind him. The sun broke through the clouds all of a sudden, glinting off his braces like a carnival ride. I brandished my key.

  “I’ll sort that out later,” I said. “Right now I have to sleep.”

  “Drove all night from Nebraska, hey?”

  He stepped aside as I unlocked the deadbolt and stumbled into the room. I saw a brown pole-lamp, a television, the bed yawning in front of me. Then my face was on the white pillow, and somewhere behind me the door clicked shut.

  “Oh,” Chad said from outside. “Okay.”

  But after a couple of minutes—maybe two hundred—the need to talk to my kids woke me up. I sat up and my intestines tied a knot around my belly as I looked across at the beige telephone. All I wanted was to hear one of them say “Dad” in my ear, and I just hoped that whatever vague explanation I gave of what I’d been doing wouldn’t sound too hollow.

  I dialed. The ring from the other end sounded like a good old Nebraska ring. My arms felt weak despite all the pbf bacon.

  “Hello?” Deb said, matter-of-factly, like she didn’t figure her line was tapped.

  “It’s Peter,” I said.

  “Oh, I knew it. Call display said ‘Ohio,’ and everyone I know in Ohio’s passed on—oh, what a thing to say.” Her voice got faint. “Kids! It’s your dad!”

  “Everything all right?” I asked.

  “Oh, sure. The drive was fine the other day, and I signed them up to start at Parkview down the road tomorrow. Does Josie really take size eight shorts for gym? They look awfully short on her.”

  “That’s what she had in September,” I said, “but I thought she could’ve had nine or ten. Get twelve if you want, she’ll grow into them. And keep track, I’ll pay you back.”

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure, Peter. This has just been lovely. Here’s Ray.”

  “Hey, Da-ad?” he asked.

  “Yessir.” I smiled. “What is it, Ray?”

  “Are you in bed?”

  “I was, yeah. Because I’m not feeling well, you mean?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can’t fall asleep if it’s during the day.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that.”

  “Dad?” This was Josie, on the other line.

  “Hi, Sweetheart,” I said.

  It was a mistake to have phoned. I needed to touch the backs of their heads.

  “Are you feeling better?” she asked.

  “I do feel better, a lot better, but there’s still a few things to sort out.”

  “How, um, how come you’re in Ohio?”

  “Hey, MacArthur has Ballocity! But you have to keep your socks on,” said Ray.

  “Well, I can be there in time for your birthday,” I said. “I’ll take you then.”

  “My birthday’s after Easter.”

  “Grandma says I’m going to need braces,” Josie said solemnly. “She said my bite looks weird.”

  “Do you want braces?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not allergic to cinnamon anymore,” said Ray.

  I watched my oblong, reflected self in the turned-off television screen—if I’d bothered to wash my face I might’ve looked like someone’s father.

  “Okay, I should talk to Grandma again. I love you so much. Have fun at your new school.”

  “Okay,” they said together. “Bye!”

  Then a clatter of handsets. Somehow in the tv reflection I didn’t have any ears.

  “I’m still here,” said Deb. “They really are fine.”

  “You’re all relaxed, hey? Nobody strange coming by the house?”

  “No, no, everything as per usual. We raked leaves. The house across the street, do you remember the one?”

  “With the fountain?”

  “It was on the market two years, then on Saturday it said sold, and this morning somebody moved in.”

&nbs
p; “Uh-huh.” My gut re-knotted—I pictured gas-masked Penzler guys unloading houseplants from a moving van. “Is it a, uh, a whole family?”

  “No, just one fellow so far. He’s on the plump side so the girls and I may have to get him out walking.”

  All was well in MacArthur, so my unconscious suddenly reminded me to let the zombies out of the ambulance. Had it been hours?

  “Peter?” Deb called from my hand.

  “Sorry, I’m right in the middle of wending my way back to you,” I said, angling the phone toward its cradle. “Love to everyone.”

  I staggered to the door. The sun was significantly lower in the sky. The rest of the parking lot was empty, and as far as I could tell no one was spying from behind curtains. I opened the ambulance’s back door an inch. The sawdust smell was getting pretty rank, and I could tell by the absence of its smell that they’d finished off the bacon.

  “Anybody got to pee?” I whispered.

  “Holy crap, it’s him!” said Franny.

  “Holy crap, were you asleep?” asked Clint.

  “Too late, you bastard,” said Colleen. “I peed in the Rubbermaid.”

  “This thing seemed a lot roomier when it was moving,” said Harv.

  “Harv said you got clubbed to death!”

  “I seriously thought you’d left for California once and for all,” said Clint. “Didn’t I say that?”

  They managed to assemble their five faces in the crack, like on an album cover.

  “How big’s the room?” asked Franny. “Lots of beds?”

  “One double. But if we—”

  “I’ll go check us in,” said Colleen. “Then we won’t have to keep peeping and hiding.”

  “Oh,” I said, “okay.” That did make sense—I’d pictured propping a kid in each corner. “Aren’t they going to wonder how you got here?”

  “Let us out. My boyfriend dropped me off.”

  I took her small hand and helped her down to the pavement. Beneath the angle of her eyebrows she squinted at me in the bright afternoon.

  “Did the cop say anything when you were inside?”

  “I wasn’t inside her,” I said by accident.

  “When you checked in. Has she come across anybody like us?”

  “Didn’t mention.”