The Nightworkers

by Brian Selfon

  “Girlfriend had a jealous ex.” Henry’s voice is all sandpaper.

  “I heard him talking,” Kerasha says. “He was worried about the police.”

  “Sketchy as fuck,” Henry says.

  “So I’m typing in ‘sketchy ex-boyfriend.’” Lipz wags the phone at Henry. “Nothing’s coming up.”

  “His name’s Noah. Fuck, Lipz, this is hard enough without you—”

  “I’m making this hard? How was I supposed to guess Noah? Your friend’s girlfriend’s ex—this is common knowledge?”

  Henry winces, and Shecky has to hide his smile. Dannie definitely could have said something like this. Damn this girl, she shouldn’t be here, but she sure as shit is bringing him back.

  At Uncle Samuel’s, Dannie would sneak him out of the wicked box, and sometimes she took hits for this. Then one day Uncle Samuel had had enough of them. He beat them out of his apartment and beat them all the way to Uncle Joseph’s. It was quieter there, and the kids had time for more than mere survival. Dannie sat with Shecky and his homework at the kitchen table. She taught him number and memory tricks, many of which he uses today—uses automatically, proof that Dannie lives on in the wiring of his brain. But Dannie was more than tricks, of course, and this Dannie—the whole person—is long gone.

  Gone, what a gentle way of putting it. How about killed. Raped and strangled and tossed. Dog-found, coroner-carved, and evidence-photographed. Not that there was ever anyone to inculpate. The killer, faceless, ghostly. The sister, dumped into a pine casket. Shipped off to Cypress Hill Cemetery just two days after the police released her body. Shecky was already back at school—Uncle Joseph made the arrangements and didn’t tell Shecky until it was all over. And so Danis Phillipa Keenan went down, buried by strangers, no one there to say who she was and that she’d been loved. Buried without family.

  Now and then over the years his treasonous heart has asked him whether she even existed. No one speaks of her. He’s guilty of that himself. He’s shown no photographs, never mentioned her to Henry. Her voice he recalls but also doubts. Did she really sound like that? The things he remembers her saying—are any not made up? Other questions he can’t always answer: Did anyone ever love him? Had he ever known family?

  Well hopefully the answer is here, in this room.

  Henry is looking alive now, watching Lipz as she reads the text exchange aloud. Changing her voice, text by text. Kerasha is watching her, too, only she’s obviously fighting back laughter. Lipz shouldn’t be here, she’s an outsider—but she’s doing so well, with her voices, and this is turning into a family moment: the whole room has a single focus.

  Imani, the girlfriend: Stop texting me.

  Noah, the ex: Where’s Emil?

  Imani: Fuck you

  Noah: You don’t know where he is

  Imani: Shaddup

  Noah: You don’t know who he’s fucking with

  Imani: Stop stalking him. Stop texting me. Die.

  Noah: I saw him with a woman.

  A pause as Lipz taps on the phone. She resumes in her own voice, turning to Henry: “She never responded to this.”

  Henry adjusts his ice pack. Shecky deflates a little. This texting melodrama—so simple, and so well read! And it was a very Dannie moment, but now it’s over.

  “So what are we saying?” Kerasha asks the table. “That the girlfriend found out Emil was cheating, and she killed him?”

  “That didn’t happen,” Henry grumbles. “She’s not like that.”

  “Which is exactly what makes her”—Lipz stubs out her cigarette theatrically—“our prime suspect.”

  Henry glares at her, and Shecky understands that her tone is most unwelcome—to him. For Shecky, though, Lipz should be up for a Tony.

  For the role of Dannie.

  And just like that, the glee is gone, because the pain of losing her is always right there. Coming in, going out, every breath.

  It was his eleventh birthday.

  At the last minute, Uncle Joseph insisted that they celebrate with cake and pizza at the corner drunk house. Uncle Joseph called over his own crew, a few of their girlfriends and kids, and then a random neighbor and her randomer cousin.

  Shecky invited Dannie.

  A week earlier she had moved in with a much older boyfriend who had his own apartment down the street. Shecky still saw her daily, but he missed her every second she wasn’t around. This was the period when Dannie was just beginning to get steady work as a stage manager, and that night she had a rehearsal. “I’ll run it fast,” she promised him. “I’ll be there for you. Save me some cake.” But then she didn’t come, and she didn’t call, and she went on not coming or calling. The party was over. Shecky still remembers the sticky floor. Remembers the too-loud music, that a pigeon somehow got into the drunk house. Remembers, also, his empty stomach: in his head Dannie had always been just about to appear. He had wanted to eat with her.

  Shecky brought her slice home and put it in the refrigerator. He hated Dannie for not coming, hated that she’d promised, hated that he’d told everyone at the party she was on her way. Hated that when he’d asked Uncle Joseph to call her one last time, he’d said, “Leave that bitch alone.” Hated her for this, because Uncle Joseph was Uncle Joseph, but Dannie was supposed to be better.

  Late that night Shecky went back to the refrigerator and ate her cake. Another hour, no call, no Dannie. Bitch.

  Alone again in the dark, he wrapped himself in his tattered blanket, wormed to the almost-flat part of the sofa-bed mattress, and listened to the shouts and laughter and clatter of his uncle’s card game in the adjoining room. Dozing, Shecky’s hatred for Dannie receded. In its place crept a wispy dream, which he would regret for the rest of his life. In the dream he stood above a beautiful, slim girl. She was pale. She was still. Struck by a car while crossing the street with an armful of gifts. And Shecky felt so light and free: his beautiful sister was dead, and this proved she hadn’t forgotten his birthday after all.

  The detectives came around the day after the party. They questioned Uncle Joseph and they questioned and re-questioned, Shecky learned later, a man from Uncle Joseph’s crew, who had a history of hurting girls. But because nothing came of this—no one was ever arrested, and there never was a proper funeral—Shecky didn’t quite believe Dannie was forever gone until he was visited by a city social worker. It was from her that Shecky learned, very belatedly, that his beautiful, terrible dream had come true. His sister hadn’t been car-crushed while carrying an armful of presents, but she really had died on her way to him. “Your sister loved you very much,” the social worker explained to Shecky, having first primed him with Skittles. “She never forgot about you. I can’t tell you how I know that,” she added, with a quick, almost guilty look at her briefcase, “but it’s true. She was going to your party.” The moment Shecky started to cry, the social worker herself came apart. And when she excused herself and rushed off to find the bathroom, Shecky quieted down. Helped himself to her briefcase. Picked out a copy of Dannie’s incident report. Shecky couldn’t define half the words in that report, but he understood it perfectly. Dannie’s death excused her, just like he’d hoped. And by the logic of a child—a logic essentially still with him, despite everything—it was his own lonely wish that killed her.

  * * *

  “What’s next?” Henry says. Coming back to his senses, Shecky scans the room, wondering what he missed. Kerasha has formed her hands into a ball, fingertips touching fingertips. Henry’s eyes are closed, but he manages a nod toward Lipz. “Keep reading.”

  “There’s nothing to read,” she says, tapping the phone. “She never responds to him—fuck. Wait. Looks like boyfriend got a new phone the next week. Here’s a new thread. But it’s totally one-sided.”

  Noah: You’re better off without him.

  Noah again: I’m getting you back.

  Lipz lowers the phone and the kids exchange looks: Lipz to Henry, Henry to Kerasha, now all eyes on Shecky. The room is eerie and some
how electrified, and Shecky agrees with what they’re not saying. The girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, what’s his name—Noah—he looks bad here. Better off without him, and then—a body. But Shecky knows that death comes at you sideways. What’s likely is dust under what is.

  “This is guesswork,” Henry says at last. Breaking the silence, echoing Shecky’s own thoughts. “We’ve got to analyze this shit.”

  Attaboy. He’s proud of the kid. The pudgy boy who used to brawl with his classmates—he’d never paused to analyze.

  “No way it’s Noah,” Henry says. “Emil got snuck on a job. Carrying a bag. Did Noah just get lucky? Decides to kill him—the first time Emil’s ever had a heavy?” He takes his ice pack to the kitchen. Comes back with a bag of frozen vegetables, sits and puts that to his head. “Emil’s girlfriend called me a shadow. And she said he had another shadow, meaning—fuck if I know. Maybe someone followed him around? Figured out his pattern?”

  Shecky blows out some breath, doesn’t like the taste of his mouth. “Since when do our runners follow patterns?” A blade in his voice now. “Where’s your head, Henry? I trained you better than that.”

  “We don’t live in training.” Henry raises his eyes. “I know everything is perfect in your ledger, but we live here.”

  The room is airless, Shecky hard-looking at Henry, Henry hard-looking back at him.

  “Let’s say there was a pattern,” Henry continues, a moment later. “Could be it wasn’t on our side. Could be the pattern was on the drop-off, and Red Dog’s looking into how his guy went wrong.”

  Lipz snorts. “If Red Dog’s guy went wrong, we’ll hear about that shit fast. He puts boys down when they get stupid.” With a kind of glee she grabs a peach from the fruit bowl. She brings it close to her mouth and then asks, looking at no one in particular, “But how long before he comes after you?”

  A response comes from the forgotten seat: “We should look at the ledger.” Kerasha nods up toward the office on the second floor. “We can make a list of all the days he did jobs for us. And if he’s texting with Imani on those days, while he’s out on his run for us…” To Henry she adds, as if apologetically: “I’m sorry. But maybe there is a pattern.”

  “We’re not bringing the ledger down here.” Shecky’s glare directs Kerasha to Lipz, who is so very not-family. Who should never even be in the same room with the ledger, let alone present while it’s read. He’s about to add some choice words to this effect when Henry stirs and says, “June sixteenth. June twenty-fourth.” He adjusts his bag of frozen veggies. “We don’t need the ledger, I remember his days.”

  A half hour passes. Somewhere in the middle of it, Lipz gives the phone to Kerasha and goes to the kitchen, where—and this amazes Shecky—she starts washing dishes. Henry, meanwhile, has his head in his hands, and Kerasha is still just sitting there with the phone in her hand, scrolling and reading. Shecky can hear Lipz humming in the kitchen, can hear little splashes from the sink where she’s working. This is a moment of peace. This is wasted time. The dead runner’s girlfriend, her ex—this is far from helpful. He’s about to restart the conversation when Kerasha, who’s been going through the phone all this time, looks up at Henry: “Emil had a studio?”

  Henry raises his head. “What about it?”

  Lipz comes in from the kitchen, wiping her hands with a dishcloth, and all eyes are on Kerasha when she says, “Emil went to the studio every day he did a job for us. At least that’s what he wrote. Here: Heading to studio. And here: Leaving studio now.”

  Lipz: “Pattern—boom.”

  “Or it could just be a coincidence,” Shecky says. “Like he washes his hands every day. That doesn’t mean it’s the reason he … you know.”

  Kerasha, God bless her, turns to Henry and speaks to him in a tender, low voice, as if they’re the only ones in the room: “I’ll go look at it with you.” She puts down the girlfriend’s phone. “I’ll help you get in.”

  The hopeful-grateful look Henry gives Kerasha now is tender, rare, and potent. Shecky catches this look and feels something tight in his chest. He lifts a trembling mug. The kids are working together, he thinks, and what a beautiful thing—they’ll keep each other safe.

  But the next killing happens that night.

  chapter 26

  Suicide by patient—is this a thing? Dr. Xu obviously wants to die, obviously wants her to be his killer. Two weeks before the murder, Kerasha is tempted.

  “Let’s get back to the kleptomania,” he says. That pen—faux fountain tip for the faux doctor—is out and uncapped and ready to memorialize recalcitrance. “How do we define it?”

  Same way we did last week, homunculus.

  “Stealing,” she says. He likes to correct her, so she gives him every opportunity. Let him feel smart. Let him feel his treatment is shepherding a poor soul out of her dark ignorance. If he feels superior enough during these sessions, maybe next month—just maybe—he’ll tell the court she’s a good little girl. No recalcitrance after all, that was a misdiagnosis. Disregard previous notes to the contrary, judge. This patient doesn’t need further mind-fucking.

  “Kleptomania,” Dr. Xu says, pocketing his pen, “is an ungovernable compulsion to steal. Not the stealing itself. This distinction is subtle, but it’s important, and I want you to understand it. The compulsion is what we’re getting at here. It’s why you’re in this room.”

  “That and the court order.” Fuck, she wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. It’s just that he’s talking about her as though there were something wrong with her brain. Bad chemistry, childhood traumas—she read plenty about both in the Franklin library. For her, though, stealing has always been straightforward. Skinny Kerasha did it because she was poor. With Mama and her daily bag, little Kerasha undoubtedly had “issues,” but the more pressing concern was always hunger.

  A few weeks ago a fishbowl full of marbles appeared on Dr. Xu’s coffee table. She fixes her eyes on it, focuses on her breathing. Nicole, her yoga embezzler jail buddy, would be proud. Let on the inhale, go on the exhale. Only Kerasha’s om for the ponytail is stay (breathe in) the fuck out of my head (breathe out).

  Dr. Xu shifts in his chair and brings his hands together, just the fingertips. That hateful pose he studied, she’s more certain than ever, from some TV psychiatrist. She’s also certain he’s still congratulating himself on his definition of kleptomania. “So what do you think is behind this”—TV psychiatrist pause—“compulsion?”

  She lets the question hang a long time before saying, “You mean, why do I, like, steal?” Pained, slow consideration, then an idiot’s nonanswer: this is one of her tricks for passing the time here. It lets him feel superior, which is his goal, and gets her off without having revealed anything, which is hers. Win-win, Uncle Shecky, that’s how we get through this.

  That and swiping a couple of marbles from the fishbowl. Her newest trick for killing time here—klepto-what, Dr. Xu? Easy handwork, so stupid of him to put the fishbowl next to the big tissue box.

  “Do people actually cry here?” she had asked during their first meeting.

  “Some do. Some cry every time they come in.” Jesus fuck, her uncle would say, who’d choose this profession?

  “Do you feel like crying, Kerasha?” he’d asked.

  She just stared at him, which he apparently took as a heavy maybe. “Because if you ever do, now or at any point in our treatment, it would be absolutely okay.”

  Today, though, things are not absolutely okay with Dr. Xu. He’s showing his frustration. “I don’t mean why do you ‘like, steal.’” Some movement around the nostrils. “Like suggests approximation. There is no approximation in my question.” His eyes narrow to slits as he leans forward: “I mean why do you steal, and I mean that precisely.”

  Oh, so you want to get grammatical, Dr. Xu? The marbles send warm tingles across her palm. Don’t fight him, she thinks. Keep it in your head.

  Fuck my head.

  “I don’t, like, steal,” she says. “I, like, s
tole. I got, like, caught, and I learned my, like—my fucking lesson.”

  “You haven’t learned anything,” Dr. Xu says, “if you don’t understand why you did it.”

  “So that is what you want to know.” She gives him an idiot’s gotcha smile. “You want to know, like, why I stole.”

  He winces, shakes his head, and is just opening his mouth when she talks over him:

  “I stole because I wanted stuff. I saw something, or heard about something, or thought there’d be something somewhere. And I fucking took it.”

  There, little man, happy now? She’s given him something close to a real answer. Scary close, in fact, because she doesn’t know why she gave it.

  But the little man is never happy with her level of discomfort. Always finds a new excuse to poke, pierce, slice.

  “You mentioned want,” he says. “Maybe we can talk about where that came from.”

  “Where want came from?” Pause, question the question, pause. But the trick isn’t working this time. Somewhere inside her, a vague unease is hardening into a mass. It’s like when she hears a police siren. It’s never for her, she knows, never because of her.

  Except when it is.

  And that’s how she feels sitting before this fishbowl full of marbles, with this little man and his ponytail. He may not know what he’s doing, but sometimes even little men can blunder in the right direction. Her brain hurts just above the left temple. Too tired to think sensibly, she catches herself wondering whether his incompetency might give him an advantage over her. Before today she was thinking grandmaster chess, ten steps ahead, but his moves have been beyond logic. Motivated, really, only by a desire to make her hate herself.

  Come on, Kerasha, her inner Uncle Shecky texts, just get thru it. In minutes you’ll walk away from this fishbowl of marbles, and in a half hour you’ll be back in the bosom of your almost-family. Back on your web. In your dreams tonight you can wrap him in filaments and put your fangs in him. You can watch as the venom liquefies his organs, and he’ll die terribly in your dream. Here, though, you’ve got to just let him be.