Untouchable (11 page)

She’d tell Darby about Wrigley Field with her father, Dodgers-Cubs games, great seats procured from some business contact, field level, eight or ten rows back from the visitor’s dugout. Two Dodger rooters among the Ron Santo and Fergie Jenkins fans, hooted at for their ball caps, their cheers for the opposing team. Her father recognized in later years, when she was twelve, thirteen. Her father known by name to many of the fans around them, Earl Patrick, the late-night TV sales guy, or known to some as the snake-oil man, the confidence man, the huckster. Earl sucking in the warm greetings and bristling at the insults, skin as thin as a Cubs lead in the bottom of the eighth. He had dreams of throwing out the first pitch, of being asked to partake in the ceremony; he had a wild imagination which he shared with her in the moments between the pitcher’s windup and delivery to the plate, the runner taking a short lead off first, the pauses, the breath in the game. He had dreams of national celebrity, of respect, of finally being appreciated as a visionary of the future of televised commerce, moving Lucy and her mother to Los Angeles to produce legit television, situation comedies and hour-long dramas, awards shows, variety specials. He kept a color postcard tacked to the wall of his office in Skokie: Sunset Boulevard circa 1970, gleaming headlights and taillights, theatre marquees, yellow spotlight beams crossing the night sky. This was the dream. Between pitches, he leaned over and shared it with her in a conspiratorial hush that sent a chill from her tailbone to the nape of her neck. Her father’s beery whisper in her ear. This was the dream, he’d say, and it was within reach. A few more years here and then they’d take off west. They’d all live happily ever after, Lucy and her mother and the great Earl Patrick. No more angry phone calls, no more insulting greetings at ball games from mouth-breathing drunks, just swimming pools and sunburn, everybody happy, everybody getting what they deserved.

The sun would start to show out the kitchen windows, the morning finally arrived, and Lucy would sip her coffee and Darby would ask again what the dreams were about, the dreams that made it impossible for her to sleep. She’d give her small, deflecting smile and shake her head and say that they were nothing. They were about nothing. They were about baseball.

Bob paid their bill at the diner, the result of some previous lost bet with Roistler. They drove back to the storage facility. There was a good deal of fluid sprayed around the first unit, the living room. The couch had to be disposed of, a pair of rugs, piles of newspapers and magazines, freestanding racks of clothes. Darby worked on his knees on the cement floor, spraying and scrubbing underneath crates and boxes, into cracks and crevices where fluids had spread and dried. The day grew, lengthened, the sun pouring into the unit through the open doors, the heat getting bad, worse. Game shows played on the TV. Tino returned in a fresh red jogging suit, a matching Cardinals ball cap, resumed pacing outside the unit, smoking and talking on his cell phone.

About noon, the wife arrived.

Roistler noticed it first, an angry female voice outside the unit. He whistled until he got Darby’s attention, nodded toward the doorway. Bob was out at the vans, loading up for a run to the disposal site. There was a woman out there with him, petite, short-haired, dressed like she was on her way to work, a prim suit with a pleated gray skirt. She was yelling at Bob, jabbing her finger at his chest. Bob listened, nodded, moved slowly back toward the doorway, positioning himself between the woman and the unit. Tino paced in the background, eyes on the situation, whispering excitedly into his phone, a hand covering his mouth for privacy.

The woman gasped for breath as her voice rose. It had taken the police this long to find her, she said. It had taken her this long to find the storage facility, to find Van Nuys. They weren’t from there, her and her husband. They were from Costa Mesa, an hour and a half away. She’d driven up alone, as soon as the police had given her a location, even though they had told her not to come.

Bob pulled back his hood, removed his goggles and mask. He listened and nodded, kept himself between the woman and the unit.

Darby tried to ignore her. This was Bob’s job. Bob would handle it. Darby moved deeper into the corner. Some fluid had spread under the couch, drying on the concrete, filling the cracks. He sprayed the area, watched the enzyme bubbling.

The noise from the TV was gone, suddenly. Roistler had turned it off so he could hear the conversation outside. Darby waved his hand, trying to get him to turn it back on, snapping his fingers ineffectively in the rubber gloves. Roistler ignored him, watching the woman, crying now, hysterical, jabbing her finger at Bob’s chest.

“We’re not at liberty to discuss that, ma’am,” Bob said. “That’s something you should discuss with the police.”

“The police said it was some sort of knife.”

“We’re not at liberty to discuss that.”

“The police said it was some sort of large knife but I want to know for sure. You have to understand that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I have to know if it was a knife from our home. If he took a knife with him when he left. If he intended to do this all along.”

Darby focused on his immediate area, the cracks beneath the couch, scooped up the liquefied fluid with a fistful of paper towels.

“You can’t keep me out,” the woman said.

“I can’t let you in, ma’am.”

“The police said he was living here. Is that true? Why would he live here?”

Darby moved deeper into the corner. This was Bob’s job. Bob would handle it. He sprayed another crack in the floor, coughed into his mask. It felt like there was something caught in his throat.

“Who else is in there?” the woman said.

“Ma’am, if you’d just go back to your car.”

“I heard someone else in there. I heard someone cough.” Her voice gone ragged, shrill.

Darby coughed again. There was something stuck in his throat, a little piece of something, a speck, a fleck. It was next to impossible that a contaminant could pass through the mask. The mask was thick rubber and plastic. He coughed again. It had to be a piece of the mask, a little speck of plastic or rubber that he’d inhaled.

“Who else is in there?” The wife was almost screaming now.

“We have a team of technicians, ma’am,” Bob said. “We’re trained to deal with situations like this.”

And then she was past him; then she was inside. She ducked under Bob’s arm, pushed past, punched, kicked, something. She stood in the center of the unit, between Darby and Roistler, looking at what was left, what was yet to be cleaned up, the fluid and matter and dead vectors and these men in their masks and moonmen suits, one standing not far from her, watching, one kneeling in the corner, clutching a handful of red-soaked paper towels, turning as if caught, as if discovered doing something unspeakable.

She put her hand over her mouth. “Oh you cocksuckers,” she said. “Oh you dirty cocksuckers.”

Bob was at her side, had her arm, leading her back out of the unit. She was sobbing and he had his arm around her shoulders, was saying something to her, low and soothing, steering her back out into the fresh air, the sunlight. Tino had dropped his cell phone in the gravel, was watching incredulously, his hands up at the sides of his head, pulling at his ball cap.

They could hear the woman wailing now, the familiar soul-deep keen, a sound they’d heard a hundred times, the call of inarticulate loss.

Darby coughed again. It was still caught in his throat, a speck, a fleck. He coughed into the mask, trying to get it loose, get it out.

Once the woman’s moan had faded, Roistler poked his head out the door, looked one way, the other.

“Where’s Bob?”

Darby tossed his redbag into the center of the room with the others, pulled off his gloves and goggles, turned up the volume of the TV as he exited the unit. Tino was still outside the door, trying to fit his cell phone back together, the battery and the miniature antennae. A trail of dust from the woman’s car stretched down to the end of the gravel row. Bob was nowhere to be seen.

It was the high heat of the day. The sun pounded Darby’s forehead, the back of his neck. He walked down the gravel drive to a narrow shady space between the buildings. He heard something from the other end of the space, gagging sounds, coughing. He followed the sounds, gravel crunching under his boots, through to the other side, the back of the storage unit, bright sun again, where he found Bob doubled over by the fence, retching into a patch of high weeds.

“Christ, what the hell did I eat?” Bob spoke between heaves, gasping for air. A long strand of saliva dangled from his lower lip.

“Let’s go,” Darby said. He put a hand on Bob’s arm. “Let’s go. Let’s get back to work. It’s over.”

“Something didn’t agree with me.” Bob sounded a little wild, spitting into the brush. “What the hell did I eat?”

“It’s over,” Darby said. He struggled to pull Bob to his feet, steer him back around toward the storage unit. “Let’s get back to work. It’s over and done.”

He stood alone in the second unit, the bedroom. Bob and Roistler were out packing the vans. He held the camera, tried to shake the woman’s voice from his head, the look on her face when she’d seen what they were doing. He lifted the camera to his eye, looked through the viewfinder at the unit. Just some boxes left, some crates that had escaped the mess. The frame of the cot, the exercise bike. The room was clean. The job was finished.

He coughed again, that fleck still in his throat. He looked through the camera, tried to shake the woman’s voice. Coughed again. The woman’s voice folded into his familiar headache, the behind-the-eyes knot, and then came the white-noise rushing in his ears, spreading into the entire storage unit, the only sound in the vacuum of the room, a tremendous noise, almost deafening.

It was a man’s gold wedding ring, sitting on one of the boxes in the far corner of the unit. He hadn’t noticed it before. It had escaped the splatter and spray. He tried to ignore it. The room was finished. He wanted to leave, go home. He wanted to take a shower; he wanted to sleep. He looked through the viewfinder. It felt like his eardrums would split, the rushing was so loud. The ring sat on a box in the corner of the camera frame. He couldn’t take the picture. He couldn’t take the picture as long as the ring remained. The ring was proof of the room before they’d come. The ring left the room unfinished. He could barely think, the noise was so loud. He would give the ring to Tino. He would take the ring back to Everclean. He coughed, trying to dislodge the speck from his throat.

It was there, in his hand. He was standing on the other side of the room, near the boxes, and the ring was in the palm of his hand, cool against his skin. He would give the ring to Tino or bring the ring back to Everclean. Or he could take the ring. The ring would be safe with him. He would find a safe place to keep it. Something like this could be easily lost, thrown away. Something like this held meaning for someone and should be kept safe.

The silence of the room screamed in his ears. The ring was in his hand and then the ring was in his pocket. He was standing back in the doorway between the units and the ring was in his pocket and the rushing in his ears ceased. It was there and then it was gone. The room empty of all sound. He looked through the viewfinder. The room had settled. The room was finished, the room was complete.

He snapped the picture and the unit flashed white.

Finally, just before lunch, Miss Ramirez told the class about the plans for Halloween. They’d been waiting for this information for a long time. Over the last couple of weeks, whenever someone had asked what was happening for Halloween, Miss Ramirez told them they had to wait, Halloween was still a long way off, they had plenty to accomplish before then. The kids were worried; the kids were unsure. They didn’t know if there would be any Halloween festivities in sixth grade, didn’t know if that stuff was just for elementary school kids. They worried and they didn’t know if they should be worrying, if those were little kid things to do, both dressing up for Halloween and worrying about whether or not they were dressing up for Halloween.

They were going to dress up. This was the news from Miss Ramirez. There was an eruption of relieved, joyous applause in the classroom. The Kid clapped, too, clapped right along with the other kids. He looked over and saw Arizona clapping and smiling. This was the news they’d been waiting for. There was going to be a party in the classroom. They’d need to bring twenty-two Halloween cards to the party, one for each student in the class, not counting themselves. In the card, they should write one thing they appreciated about the classmate the card was intended for. The Kid wrote this in his notebook.
22 Halloween Cards
. Then he crossed out the
22
and wrote
23
because Miss Ramirez hadn’t included herself in the total and The Kid thought she’d probably feel bad if she didn’t get any cards.

There was still some residual clapping as they lined up to go outside for lunch. The Kid rushed to his spot at the front of the line, right near the door, just behind where Miss Ramirez would stand when she led them out to the courtyard. If he didn’t get that first spot in line, he was invariably shoved toward the rear, where Razz flicked his ears and spat on the back of his neck all the way out to the picnic tables.

The line was a crooked mess, surging back and forth, the kids all jazzed up about the Halloween news. The Kid kept getting crushed against the door, so he opened it and stepped out into the hallway to give the line some room, and that was how he saw Little Rey Lugo walking slowly down the hallway, alone.

Rey didn’t look okay. He was holding a large cardboard bathroom pass and walking unsteadily toward The Kid, listing toward the left side of the hallway. There was something wrong. He was looking at something at the other end of the hall with a weird, spacey expression on his face, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The rest of the class was still jostling for position back inside the classroom. It was just The Kid and Rey in the hall. The Kid turned to look behind him, to see what Rey was staring at with that strange expression on his face. There was nothing there. The hall was empty. When The Kid turned back, Rey’s crooked walk had him brushing right up against the lockers, still staring at something down the hall, his mouth hanging slack, his eyes open wide.