The Nightworkers

by Brian Selfon

  And Shecky is aghast at how crude this all is. A fake OD—surely there must be more to the plan than this? The Paradise Club, with their crisp cash and their shining shoes—with their hired assassin and his special weapon—surely there will be some final masterstroke? There must be, or else Detective 7229 will piece it together. Could he really believe the two deaths, both connected to the family, are coincidental?

  But then Shecky sees the calm, self-satisfied look on Matt’s face as he gives Shecky a lazy wave and walks off. And Shecky remembers that this is Brooklyn, where the police don’t dig any deeper than they have to. They sure as fuck didn’t for Dannie. Shecky remembers all too well the totality of that investigation: a few door knocks, a collective shrug, and then off with the files to deep storage.

  So here’s a very convenient truth, for Shecky, about Detective 7229. He isn’t piecing together shit. He’ll take what he’s given.

  And now Shecky can see the whole investigation play out. An addict is found dead with something in her blood—another OD, cursory investigation, file closed. The partners of Shecky Keenan may be sloppy, but he operates in a world where sloppy is good enough.

  Shecky stands over the girl and for a long time keeps his eyes on what he’s done.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says. For a moment, he is.

  chapter 46

  There are three people Henry feels like killing right now. The first is already dead, the second expected any minute. And the third sits at his uncle’s desk, his heart heavy with doubt and hurt.

  A sound from downstairs.

  Henry Vek closes the ledger, rises with the gun, and goes to the door. He listens. Another sound brings him into the hall.

  His body hot and cold, his mind clear, he waits for his uncle’s voice. Can already almost see the small, nervous face peering up at him from the bottom of the stairwell. Henry raises the gun with shaking hands.

  No one’s in the stairwell.

  Thank God.

  No, no, be strong. Two shots—one out, one in, just like breath—then it’s over.

  Henry switches the gun to his left hand. He stomps to announce himself. Flips off the safety and puts his finger on the trigger. There’s something wrong with his eyes—fuck, now he’s crying—but he feels so light and free. See, Uncle Shecky? I met the problem head-on. I worked it out all by myself—just like you—and now I’m completing the solution. Stomp, stomp, he descends, and at last a shadow falls over the bottom step. He squeezes the trigger. Squeezes harder, digs his palm into the grip, but it’s not enough, the trigger bends but doesn’t catch until—

  He’s at the bottom step. He’s caught up with the shadow and discovered it’s his own.

  Please God, say he’s not home.

  Turning the corner, he switches his gun back to his right hand, wipes his palm against his jeans, and is just getting a new, dry hold on the grip when he sees that the dining room table is set. A full family breakfast.

  The gun lowers.

  Before Henry are three plates, three mugs, three sets of silver on cloth napkins. On bowls and plates are eggs and toast, bacon and fruit. Henry touches the toast: still warm.

  Uncle Shecky must have just walked out of the room, Henry thinks. I’ve been couch-surfing for days, Kerasha has been MIA fuck knows how long, but here’s our breakfast, just the way we like it. The Tabasco bottle is near Kerasha’s plate, the rhubarb jam closer to mine. Never mind that Uncle Shecky must have come home drunk off his ass, for him to have whipped up this meal at stupid o’clock in the morning. He never—never—gives up on us. Even after all this shit, he wants us to walk in the door and know there’ll always be a place for us here.

  Our home. Henry wipes his eyes. He was watching over us.

  Like he always has.

  Henry sets the gun on the table and walks out the door.

  part ten

  the living

  chapter 47

  One hour earlier, as Henry waits, quiet and motionless in the upstairs office, Kerasha slips into the house.

  Her web just isn’t right. Henry’s bed is made, which means he’s been a long time gone and Uncle Shecky couldn’t help himself. Uncle Shecky’s bed, meanwhile, is rumpled, as if squeezed all over by angry, frightened fists. There’s no Guinness in the fridge, there are bags of recyclables in the yard, and the reek of summer garbage is especially foul. Uncle Shecky must have missed their Department of Sanitation pickup date, but none of this so unnerves her as the quiet. This is a ghost house, she thinks. This is no place for the living.

  Fuck no, not my web.

  Her nausea in remission, she gets to work. The rotting garbage and bags of recyclables she puts in front of Lacey Atkinson’s house—sanitation is due to pick up on that block tomorrow morning. After washing her hands, she makes her uncle’s bed and messes up Henry’s. Quiet movements, she feels like an intruder. But it’s the house that’s all wrong. How do we fix it? Back on the ground floor she mops, as her uncle does, with vinegar and water. She makes a fresh solution and douses a rag to wipe down the kitchen and then the dining room, which she considers the center of her web: the filaments here hold the whole thing together.

  She sniffs, she looks, she listens. Nothing extra is here, she decides, after checking for bugs, both insect and electronic; what’s wrong is that something is missing. She moves to the kitchen. Finds eggs, a half stick of butter, a can of coffee, a frozen whole-wheat semolina loaf, a bottle of Tabasco, and a few dirty onions and potatoes, which, when washed, turn out to be perfectly fryable. Back of the fridge, sausage and bacon—they pass the smell test, so she gets them going in the skillet. She takes out a big pan and finds the percolator. Fires up the stove and measures the coffee and water. She chops the onions and potatoes, drops a hunk of butter into the pan, and uses her knife to scrape the potatoes and onions from the cutting board to the pan. She tilts the pan and, with a big wooden spoon, rolls everything over and under the butter. The potatoes crisped, she cracks the eggs over them, and then checks the sausage and bacon—hissing and popping. And so, in motion and in how she absently whistles, she becomes her uncle; this is his daily breakfast routine, which has amazed and frightened and warmed her from morning one.

  The percolator shakes and the house smells as it ought to. She lays out three plates and three sets of silverware, polishing the tongs of a not-quite-clean fork with the hem of her not-at-all-clean shirt. Now Kerasha summons her inner barista: straight black for Uncle Shecky, cream and sugar for herself, just cream for Henry. Thank you for being here, thank you for being my family. Breakfast for three, and nobody’s here to eat it.

  The clock tells her it is 3:00 a.m. Her body turns against itself, her skin itchy, nausea like a churning ocean.

  She goes to her room. Bumps into a bookshelf, but it holds steady—Henry did her right. She’s sweating but she covers herself with a heavy blanket. Hot and cold, she smells her own foul body and hears the rattle of her teeth. It will pass, she insists to herself. All I am is here now.

  Jesus fuck, her inner Uncle Shecky asks, when did you turn into Nicole?

  But I am here now. And the now is powerful. It’s not Dr. Xu’s apartment or the taxi he put her in. The now annihilates all that. The past happened, the now says, but this is something else.

  A hazy head. Saint Augustine crawls into bed with her. His lecherous hands search her, find the spot on her arm where the needle went in.

  “Listen,” he says, “like your very parole depends on it.” He smells like malt and his voice is the beast’s, the worst and last boyfriend who taught her about after. “Philistines ask me, What was your ‘God’ doing before he created the universe? Why was he wasting all that empty time? I tell them, time is part of the universe God created. There is no before. Now, young lady”—he squeezes Kerasha’s hand—“take that to your life. Your God. Your first true moment is right now. God has renewed you. Your time has just started.” He strokes her cheek and his eyes are Mama’s, his voice gentle like hers was. “Do you feel
me?”

  She does and she doesn’t. Ten hours later, she finds herself sitting in front of a bowl of marbles, wondering how there can be no before when last night is a mark on her arm.

  * * *

  “So I’m guessing last night will have some part in my evaluation,” she says. Although technically, she adds in her head, last night we weren’t in session.

  “We can talk about the evaluation later,” Dr. Xu says. His hands move over each other, not quite finding the ball. “How are you feeling?”

  Like sunshine, Kerasha thinks. No sweats, just a little dry mouth. She’d been clean a long spell before last night, but she still remembers how it works. Just give her a ginger ale and some dragon-fried rice, and she’ll be the perkiest little spider in Brooklyn.

  We wear the mask that grins and lies.

  “Eh.” She shrugs. “Not bad, for a relapse.”

  “But…” Dr. Xu’s mouth hangs open, his eyes expectant, then hurt. It’s hard to see him like this, acting so human. At last he asks, “Was it different this time?”

  “I was ashamed.” It takes her a moment to accept that these words came out of her, that the ponytail wasn’t pulling some trick of ventriloquism. Another moment to accept that not only are these words hers, but they’re true. Before last night she had never been with someone when the sickness hit.

  “So what changed?” The way he squirms, along with the delicacy of his voice, further unsettles her. “Why this time,” he continues, when she doesn’t answer, “didn’t you do it alone?”

  She risks a glance and is amazed to see that his eyes are kind. The fuck, her inner Henry says. Where’s the condescension? Then the obvious answer hits her. Last night she crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed. She went into his home, for fuck’s sake, puked on his floor. He can be a human to her now because they’re breaking up.

  “So who’s my new shrink?” That’s right, motherfucker, you don’t cry goodbye to this spider—I’m losing you.

  “Do you want a new psychiatrist?” he asks.

  “Obvi.” Here you go again, Dr. Ponytail, you and your fucking want. But want here provides a convenient answer to a question that’s been troubling her. Yes, of course, she wants to lose him—why else did she show up at his apartment, smacked?

  Dr. Xu presses his fingertips together and makes a ball with his hands. It’s about time, she thinks. No more pretending to care, Dr. Xu. You’re back to your true self: a man-shaped wad of condescension.

  But then it occurs to her, and for the first time, that this ball gesture may not be an affectation picked up from some TV shrink. It may be a way for the man to summon patience, and not to hop up on his coffee table and shout bullshit.

  He asks, “So what are we going to do about the heroin problem?”

  The directness of the question makes her shiver.

  “There’s no heroin problem,” she says. How about we talk about the heroin solution. Seriously, using is the operative word—using has always been a choice, has always been something she could control. The rules are simple. Shoot to the muscle, not a vein. Don’t top it off, just ride it out, and never increase the dose. Just keep your head right, and no more locking yourself into supply closets. No more getting caught.

  “So what happened last night?”

  The heroin was cheap and dirty, she thinks. I didn’t follow the rules. I was off it too long, then I started at the old dose, and it was impure.

  “Don’t you fucking look at me like that,” she says.

  His knowing nod, the tiny flare of his nostrils, and the dance of his fingertips against each other—she can’t take it. She stands and, for some reason, grabs a fistful of marbles, spilling a few to rattle and roll off the coffee table. “Don’t you fucking look at me like that,” she says again. More loose marbles bounce off the coffee table. A few slip through her fingers and patter on the floor.

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like I’m some junkie in denial.”

  Dr. Xu says nothing.

  “Do you think I’m in denial?” She hates the scratch in her voice.

  “These are the right questions,” he says, checking his nonexistent watch. “And we still have time. But I want to make sure you have a chance to talk about what you brought with you today.”

  “What I brought?”

  Just like old times, she thinks, my old question-the-question defense. What is this, week one? Jesus fuck, Kerry, you were in his bedroom last night. You puked on his rug, and he put his hand on your back. What you brought, Kerry, he’s asking, and he has a right to.

  In the fog of her anger, she forgot about the bucket.

  She sinks back to the couch. Shame—how it had surprised her when she mentioned it to him, and how quickly she chased it back in the dark. She’s ashamed again now. He wants to see what you brought, she tells herself, and you brought it for a reason. Reluctantly, moving as if with all her muscles stretched or torn, she reaches under the coffee table and pulls up the bucket. Deny this, motherfucker, she tells herself, and she looks down and makes herself see the syringes.

  “These are my dog tags,” she finally says.

  “Can you explain that?”

  “If anyone finds me,” she says, “this tells them who I belong to.”

  The doctor’s smile, if it’s there at all, is tiny. Get on with it, he’s probably thinking, show it to me. And why not? He already knows. Her hands trembling, the needles tinkling, Kerasha pushes the bucket across the coffee table. It scrapes across the table and leaves a streak of rust. This streak on the coffee table shames her even more than what happened last night.

  At last the bucket is before Dr. Xu. He picks it up nonchalantly, as if to show it’s just a dirty metal thing and has no power. The moment he peers inside, however, he makes a sound and thrusts the bucket back at her, nearly spilling the needles. For a terrible few seconds his fear and disgust are naked before her. And when he is placid again, she decides she likes him more for the lapse.

  “Let’s talk about why you carry that around,” Dr. Xu says, pushing himself back into his seat and wiping his hands on his pants. “Are you trying to take ownership of what’s in there?”

  “I don’t know who owns who,” she says. “This helps me remember.” She shoots a look at her own imaginary watch. “Is it time?”

  He gives her a look as though he wants to ask a question—Do you want it to be time?—but then stops himself. His expression changing, his mouth growing small, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat and looks at his hands as he says, “I cleared out my next appointment.”

  This leaves her breathless.

  “We need time,” he continues, “to discuss your evaluation.”

  A roaring wave of nausea. Black and purple spots. The sound of a cell door scraping across the concrete floor. The smell of the mildewed mattress, the banging of the radiator pipes in winter, the cracked toilet that, when flushed, splashes up and wets the cell floor. Motherfucker, she thinks. Dr. Ponytail saw me out, cleaned up my puke, and then called Franklin to reserve a spot for me. Of course he wrote her evaluation. This is how it works: you’re judged at your moment of failure. The room shakes gently. Just the passing J train, she supposes, but then her vision blurs around the edges. The one point of focus is the pinched space above his nose and between his eyes.

  “I don’t think I can handle this.” She hates her tiny, little girl’s voice, hates her tiny, little girl’s weakness. Just a month out of the halfway house—how did I get so soft? Clean sheets smelling of lavender, giant breakfasts with real-meat bacon and cream-and-sugar coffees; Uncle Shecky and his get thru it texts, big Henry and his girls and his tantrums. Dirty, silly Brooklyn, which she’s studied so carefully over this month, falling in love from rooftops and shadows.

  Dr. Xu goes to his desk, unlocks a drawer, and takes out printed pages, a thin, stapled packet. He places the evaluation on the coffee table.

  Kerasha can’t look at it. Her eyes lock on the tiny hook where the han
dle catches the base of her bucket.

  “You don’t have to read it,” Dr. Xu says. “In this room, you’re in control.”

  Get thru it, Kerry, she tells herself, you’ve been through worse.

  Been through? Her inner Mama shakes the bucket at her. You’ve done worse than read something ugly about yourself. That evaluation is pages, and words got nothing on a bucket of needles. Which you added to last night.

  Her hands shake as she reads. Kerasha has always been a fast reader, and her retention is strong and comprehension immediate—but she has to go over each paragraph several times before she can make sense of it. And yet here and there individual words flare up: Recalcitrant. Combative. Words, phrases: Willfully overlooks documented facts. Wall of denial. Self-destructive behavior patterns, including—

  And at last she’s on the final page, and only here finds the words that heat and bend the air: “The patient has made remarkable progress, and continued outpatient treatment is expected to facilitate further social reintegration and recovery.”

  Minutes pass, then Kerasha places the evaluation on the coffee table. Covers, not realizing it, the rust stain left by her bucket. Her eyes fix on the bowl of marbles as she says, “You didn’t mention the throwing up.”