The Nightworkers

by Brian Selfon

  No Dr. Xu.

  Did she keep up with his bike only to lose him on foot? You’re slipping, Kerasha. Skinny Kerry, the more nimble spider, would never have let this happen.

  But then she sees a ponytail. Two doors down from the bike shop is the Bushwick Food Co-op. The ponytail goes inside. She waits a minute before following.

  One whiff of the produce and she is transported.

  Goats. The food here smells like goats.

  She is nine years old. Mama is kissing sobriety this month, which means Kerasha is back in school. They loaded them up on the bus this morning and drove them to the Prospect Park Zoo. The visit starts with sea lions, middles with dingoes and a red panda, and ends with goats. Ugly animals, Kerasha thinks. The only creatures in the world that smell as bad as Mama does when she’s sweating off the heroin, her body cooking itself from the inside.

  And this is what Kerasha smells—Mama trying to get clean, the goats just being goats—as she passes bunched kale, stinging nettles in baggies, mushrooms heaped almost to her chest.

  Eyes on the prize, little Kerasha tells her. Focus on your target: Where is Dr. Xu?

  The absurdity is not lost on her that she, Bushwick’s peerless nightcrawler, has lost her psychiatrist in a grocery store. Want, think about want—those psychology books from Franklin often whisper to her, and today she grudgingly agrees with them. I want to lose him, she thinks. I’m afraid of what I’ll learn. But unlike what happened in Dr. Xu’s office, unmasking the fear here does not allow her to move through it. She is still circling aisles of cereal boxes. Compost bags, jars of organic marinara sauce … still no Dr. Xu.

  Within, a rising sense of déjà vu, and mixed with it a swelling dread. Something like a voice asks her why this all feels so familiar.

  Shut up. And this is the worst thing Dr. Xu has done to her: she’s in treatment even when she’s not.

  You’ve lost someone, the voice says. You lost someone who didn’t even realize you were following them. Who does this remind you of?

  Stop it. Shut the fuck—

  Is this a reenactment, a looping of some early childhood experience—

  “Fuck you,” she says aloud. “Fuck your fucking mother.”

  And there it is, the word is out. Sorry, Mama. I tried to leave you out of it. “Sorry,” she says aloud.

  “It’s okay.” This from a fellow shopper, a thin woman with sharp elbows. “We all have days like that.” She puts a bony hand on Kerasha’s arm, gives it a squeeze, and moves on.

  Unsettled, itchy, Kerasha takes a moment. It’s been more than five years since the warden at Franklin had Kerasha brought into his office. “I’m afraid your mother’s passed,” he said. It was days after Kerasha’s arrival in the cage. Passed, Kerasha thinks. In most senses Mama had passed long ago, but at the same time, part of her never passed at all. Still with me, Kerasha thinks. Or still just ahead.

  Like on the morning of Kerasha’s arrest. “I’m going to be good this time,” Mama said. “Still climbing. Up and up, you’ll see.” Then she kissed Kerry goodbye, went off for a “job interview”—and stopped at the first corner.

  And just like that, Dr. Xu materializes. He’s no longer wearing the khakis she last saw him in, not the crisp collared shirt, baby blue with chipped black buttons. No, somewhere behind the mushroom heap, maybe, he changed into heavy brown overalls and a coarse flannel shirt. Pulled on work gloves, thick and stained. He hauls a sloshing bucket on wheels, pushing it with the handle of a mop. And so Kerasha discovers that this odious man, whose blood and breath she had always assumed was just money and condescension, has his own kind of nightwork. She turns away. Can’t bear to see him like this, can’t stand that he has needs she doesn’t know of. His own private mystery.

  Outside the food co-op she kicks his bike. Pops two pieces of gum in her mouth and makes a promise to herself—selves, really. To little Kerry she swears never again to waste her craft on the ponytail. To big Kerasha she takes a blood oath to stop mind-fucking herself. No more stalking her psychiatrist, no more imagining his analysis, or assuming his postures, or spending a second in his company beyond what’s ordered by the court.

  A few blocks from the co-op she spits out her gum, ducks into a bodega, and buys a fresh pack. Peanut butter chocolate cups. An orange cream soda. Bag of chips. Skinny Kerasha lived on this stuff, and big Kerasha takes them more as a kind of sacrament. She repeats her oath: never again.

  And then she does it again, following Dr. Xu from his office to the gym the very next day. She notes his squash-racket bag, his green water bottle, his rolled yoga mat. Never again, she tells herself. A week passes. She sticks to her promise.

  But then it’s murder night, and she gets the call on her drop phone from Henry.

  “He’s dead,” he says.

  Her heart freezes in her chest. “Uncle Shecky?”

  “What? No, Emil.” She hears him cry. “My friend.”

  She catches her breath. Makes sure to hide her relief when she says, “Henry, I’m so sorry.” She hears low choking sounds. She gives him a moment, and takes one for herself, too. That stab of fear—the thought of something happening to Uncle Shecky—shows her how vulnerable she’s become.

  He says, “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “Where are you?”

  Funny story … “Around.”

  “Okay, I just texted you Emil’s address. The cops may be going there, too, so be careful when you go in.”

  Be careful? A crooked smile. Sweet child, don’t you know you’re talking to the spider? “What am I looking for?”

  “Grab anything connected to us,” Henry says. “Like his phone, all our messaging is there. And fuck, there may be pictures of me.” His voice breaks again, recovers. “And get our fucking bag, if you can find it.”

  “Wait, you gave him the heavy?”

  Henry doesn’t respond until a loud plane passes over Kerasha’s head. Surprise in his voice: “Where are you?”

  “What? Bad connection.” She holds the phone away from her mouth. “See you back at the house.” She ends the call and reads the text with Emil’s address. Then she tosses the phone, per protocol, and a few seconds pass before it breaks against the street far below.

  So where is she?

  Nowhere special. Just a rooftop, you know. And ten or so feet beneath her boots, a certain psychiatrist lies sleeping.

  I’ll be back, she thinks at him. We’re not done here.

  chapter 18

  Henry and Lipz are on a basketball court tucked between Towers B and C of the Moses Houses. Ending his call with Kerasha, he turns off his phone and rips it apart. His tears are drying already—he’ll let out more later, but it’s go time now, and his training tells him what to do.

  “Give me your phone,” he tells Lipz.

  “Fuck no.”

  “I’m keeping you out of this.”

  “A little late for that,” she says. “I saw the body. Also, you just fixed my phone. I’m not going to let you break it.”

  Her eyes dare him to try. He wants to, he could use the distraction. Instead he collects himself. “We were texting about where to meet.”

  “They’re going to arrest us for texting?”

  “Our texts put us near a murder. I don’t want that for you, you don’t want that for me.”

  She begins to say something, stops herself. Starts over: “For you, then.” She gives him her phone.

  The battery he just tosses, but the SIM card and motherboard he stomps into the asphalt. It’s past midnight, which, on this basketball court, usually means music. Booze, takeout, some actual basketball. Tonight, though, for whatever reason, it’s just Henry, Lipz, and a few chest-high kids with some dice.

  “We’re splitting,” Henry says. He gives her two hundred dollars from what’s left of the make-nice money. “Don’t go home. Throw some of this around.”

  “Henry, I don’t need—”

  “Be seen,” he
says. “Not with me.”

  He walks off, and his body takes over.

  There’s a newspaper stand on Jefferson Street. It hasn’t dispensed newspapers for years, but inside, below the bottles and chip bags and cassette tapes and sullied crayon notes, beneath the false bottom, is a just-in-case bag. He empties it. A New Jersey driver’s license with Henry’s picture and an Americanized name of his favorite Dutch master. A thousand dollars on a Green Dot card, another two hundred in cash. Lighter fluid, a phone registered to no one, a change of clothes, matches, and a Cobra .380 pistol—a toy in Henry’s large hands. Henry scans the street—clear—and strips down and changes right there. His old clothes, the ones he wore when he walked into that cold room and saw Emil’s body—no, don’t think about it, just keep moving—his black jeans, his hot pink T-shirt, even the boxers and socks, he stuffs everything into the newspaper stand. Sprays the lighter fluid inside, tosses in a match.

  A small fire behind him, Henry heads out to restart his night. Be seen.

  * * *

  At the Thirsty Bear, the bartender he had that long weekend with welcomes him back and pours his usual. Henry stares at Emil’s unfinished mural, that face wreathed in tentacles.

  “Here, I want to show you something,” the bartender says to Henry, doing something with her phone. Showing him some stupid meme. Henry looks away, uncomfortable. He remembers a night back in the spring, when he and Emil closed out the bar together. They switched from whiskey to beer (never fear!) and back again, and Emil introduced Henry to the work of Kara Walker. Henry had never heard of her, so Emil took out his phone, showed images of her work, and—

  Emil’s phone.

  Kerasha is looking for it, but what if the police get it first? If they unlock it, if they look through it, what will they find? Cached images of Kara Walker, maybe, but also those two-headed selfies with Henry. And Henry’s in the contacts list, the call log, the text threads—

  The texts. The fucking texts. Henry is careful—most of the time. And when Emil went missing, Henry texted Emil’s burner, per protocol, but also his personal phone. He was panicking—would’ve texted Emil’s grandma, if he’d had the number.

  His eyes return to the mural. The face seems so hideously unfinished now. The composition is childlike, the expression uncertain. And it won’t ever be finished, he realizes. The whole mural will be painted over—fuck. Henry puts down his beer. Hands to his head. Mourning the art because he can’t yet face the loss of his friend, he remembers his uncle’s voice.

  “I know you’re smart, kid. You’ve got your mother’s sense of street and your dad’s head for numbers.”

  “Then why are we still doing this?” Henry was thirteen, already three years into working for his uncle, but that didn’t matter. The training was never-ending.

  Memory exercises: PINs, phone numbers, routing numbers, passwords, nicknames. At first it was headaches and mistakes, but over time it came to be just like putting a file in a cabinet: close it, lock it, and pull it out again when it’s needed.

  Getting rid of tails: Take off your hat or put one on. Ditto for your jacket, or turn it inside out. Know the stores and restaurants, which ones have back doors. Which have ground-floor bathrooms with windows you can open. Know the alleys, the fences, the bus schedules. Find a shadow and stay in it.

  “Smart is no substitute for body memory,” Uncle Shecky said. “When the bullets are flying, when the sirens are wailing, when there’s a helicopter overhead, the hot light on you like the eye of God—fuck knows where smart’s going to be. Going gets tough, smart shits his pants. Body memory will get you in the clear. And it’s this training—what we’re doing now—that will get you good and programmed.”

  Henry never wanted to get good and programmed. Emil Scott was never good and programmed. And yet now, as Henry drinks through his second beer, his third, he admits his uncle was right. His “smart,” as his uncle put it, did nothing to prevent Emil’s death. Whereas his body memory—programmed under protest, but programmed just the same—has seen him through.

  “Hey.”

  Henry turns, and here’s Starr Richardson. Dressed for attention—tight black pants, low-cut white shirt tight and stark against her dark skin. She smiles at Henry, nods at the empty stool next to him. “Expecting someone?”

  Henry stares at her. “You’re never out like this.”

  “You’ve never looked for me.” Her smile fades quickly. He wipes his eyes but it’s too late. She takes his hand. “What’s wrong?”

  A sigh, a shake of his head. He asks if he can crash at her place.

  Starr sublets a room in a crowded house. Her room: a bed, a dresser, a closet with a door that won’t close. He says he’ll take the floor, and she finds a clean sheet and a light blanket for him. He lies down, then she does. For a long time he listens to her listening to him. At last her breathing slows. As the night drags into morning, Henry sneezes more and more often. His eyes get itchy. Starr’s cat must be here somewhere. Henry has a weirdly similar feeling about his uncle, invisible but present just the same.

  Starr turns over in her sleep, makes a catlike sound as she resettles. Or maybe it’s the cat. And so Henry dozes off at last, his sleep breaking on grief and open questions.

  When the bedside clock shows 7:00 a.m., Henry gets up and pulls on his pants. He scribbles a note. Sketches Starr’s face on the note, writes something sweet in hopes that she’ll keep it. Puts the time on it, the date. Leaves it on her nightstand. Thank you for the alibi, he could have written. He remembers his uncle training him on this, the acceptability of a shitty alibi. “Forget ‘airtight,’” Uncle Shecky said. “Legally, all you need is doubt. It just has to be reasonable.” The old man’s wistful smile is on Henry as he walks home, thinking back on his early lessons. Remembering the boy he’d been just yesterday.

  chapter 19

  Hours back, Kerasha arrives at the four-story where, per Henry’s text, Emil rents half the top floor. She slips inside. Though her mind is still not quite her own, the spider rarely needs it. Her feet carry her forward. Her hands go into closets and desk drawers, and feel their way through an elm wardrobe. Her skin tells her she’s not the first to search this apartment tonight.

  The rooms smell of burnt coffee and overtime.

  Also, on her way into the building, she heard a neighbor talking: “It’s suck-ass o’clock, and these fucking cops are stomping down the stairs. And I step out into the hall to tell them what the fuck. And these guys are fat already, and now they’re carrying boxes, so every footfall is like a fucking IED.”

  The apartment, Kerasha decides now, has been selectively cleaned out. If Henry’s friend had a phone or a computer, if he had any paperwork at all, the police have already found it.

  And yet they didn’t find everything.

  Once when just a little spider, as Kerry crawled down through a ground-level window into a basement apartment, she spotted something taped flat to the top of a door. A hundred-dollar bill, it turned out. Well okay, then—here’s a hiding spot to look out for. She made a habit of it.

  And so now in Emil’s apartment, she finds two objects taped in just the same way. The first is a slip of paper. Cut like a business card, it’s blank on one side, and on the other is a handwritten phone number. The second object is a driver’s license. She studies the picture until she’s certain. Then she pockets her two finds and heads out into the night, thinking about Henry’s dead friend. Wondering how well Henry really knew him.

  chapter 20

  “The blues were already there,” Kerasha tells Henry the next morning.

  Uncle Shecky walks in with plates, asking, “Already where?”

  Henry lets Kerasha’s silence speak for him, too.

  Plates down, Uncle Shecky sits. “Thank you for being here, thank you for being my family.”

  Muted sounds of eating. Henry can’t touch his food. Can’t stop looking at his hard-boiled egg, the color of which reminds him of Emil’s skin in that HVAC room. At l
ast he asks Kerasha, “What were the police talking about?”

  “They were already gone,” Kerasha says. “They’d boxed everything up.”

  “For the love of Jesus,” Shecky says, “someone tell me what the fuck. Okay? Just what the fuck.”

  “But that’s too fast,” Henry says. He again thinks through the timing. Impossible. Even if the police found Emil the second Henry and Lipz left the Moses Houses, they still wouldn’t have raced straight to Emil’s apartment. They would have taped off the crime scene, canvased for witnesses. Stood around drinking coffee. Taken their sweet-ass time. Henry’s been close to the streets a long time, he knows how this works.

  And yet what he wants not to be true—what shouldn’t be true—is. The police outraced Kerasha. And she didn’t find Red Dog’s money, and she doesn’t have Emil’s phone. Even that small piece of him couldn’t be saved.

  Henry hears an odd patter. He looks down at his plate and realizes he’s crying.

  “Jesus, Henry,” Shecky says softly. “What’s going on?”

  I’m crying about some phones, he thinks.

  But this is something Henry remembers from losing Mom and Dad: no one you love dies once. They die again each time you forget not to look for them. They die when their things are taken away.

  A buzz, a beep—Uncle Shecky steps out of the room to take a call. When his voice is distant, Kerasha puts something on the table. “I’m sorry about your friend,” she says. Henry looks up and sees she’s no longer eating. She’s tapping the table in front of him.

  Tapping, on the table, two cards. She slides the first over. Blank.

  “The cops missed this,” she says. “It was taped on top of his bedroom door.”

  But the card, it turns out, is blank only on one side. On the other: a handwritten phone number.

  And now Kerasha slides over the second card. A driver’s license: Emil’s face, his half-tease smirk. Only it’s a Pennsylvania license, and Emil wasn’t from Pennsylvania. Never lived there, as far as Henry knows, and then there’s the name on the license.