Untouchable (15 page)

“Waitasecond.” A man’s voice behind Darby. “I know the name. I know it.”

Darby turned. A tall, balding man in a wrinkled gray suit was staring at him, smiling, waiting for something, expecting something. He was holding a tray with an overlarge burrito and a paper plate of multicolored tortilla chips.

“Everclean? Everclean Cleaning Service?” The man nodded as he said it. “I’m right. I know I’m right.” He stepped toward Darby, extended his hand. “Tim Nevin.”

Darby looked at him, trying to place the face, the eager smile. A sales rep from an equipment manufacturer, maybe. One of the safety goons from Sacramento. Darby took Nevin’s hand, nodding like he recognized the man, looking out into the food court for their table, for The Kid.

“How long ago was it?” Nevin said. “A year and a half? Maybe two years, now. Probably closer to two years, right?”

Darby didn’t say anything. He didn’t know who this man was, what he was talking about.

“That was something, wasn’t it?” Nevin said. “I can’t quite get that picture out of my head. You know what I mean. Walking in on something like that.”

Darby tried to spot landmarks in the food court, things they’d passed on their way to the table. Nevin still had Darby’s hand, was still pumping the handshake.

“You guys were great,” Nevin said. “You saved my ass. The restroom looked brand new. Everyone came into work the next morning, nobody had a clue. We told everyone he died at home, right? Why tell them anything else?”

Darby said nothing, tried to pull his hand free. Bob would know this man. Bob would remember. This was Bob’s job.

“You remember, right?” Nevin said. “Brokerage firm in Century City, right off Santa Monica Boulevard. Eleventh floor.” He gave a loud, nervous laugh. “You couldn’t have forgotten that fucking mess.”

Darby said nothing. He didn’t remember. Middle stall of the restroom, stall door open, car keys, wallet, receipts from a trip to Vegas on the counter next to the sinks. The force of the gunshot covering the tiled wall of the restroom, the ceiling, the stall walls, the toilet, the floor. Darby didn’t remember. He said nothing, looked for The Kid.

“Yusef,” Nevin said. “His name was Ahmed Yusef. Middle Eastern guy. Worked for us for about a year. He’d just blown a ton of money over that weekend. Company money. He had a gambling problem, a drinking problem. You remember.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Darby said.

“You’re the right guy,” Nevin said, smiling wider, in on the joke. He squeezed Darby’s hand, nodded at the tattoos on Darby’s forearm. “I know you. Everclean Cleaning Service. You came in and cleaned up that fucking mess. Yusef in the bathroom stall.”

Darby shook his head, took a step back. Nevin held on to his hand.

“You’re joking, right?” Nevin said. “How could you forget that?”

“You’ve got the wrong guy.”

“I do not have the wrong guy.” Nevin’s voice got louder, higher. Fat red blotches emerged on his neck. “Are you kidding?”

Darby shook his head. Nevin held on to his hand.

“How could you forget?” Nevin said. “This was a person. This was a person who worked for me.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy,” Darby said.

“I do not have the wrong guy. Why are you saying you don’t remember?”

Darby looked out into the food court, searching for The Kid.

“Look at me,” Nevin shouted, jerking Darby’s arm. “How could you forget that? How can you tell me you forgot that?”

Darby dropped his tray, pizza slices and Cokes clattering, spilling across the floor. He shoved Nevin hard in the chest with his free hand. Nevin lost his handshake grip, stumbled and fell, landing on the seat of his pants,dumping chips and salsa across the front of his shirt.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Nevin said. “You were there. I remember you.”

Darby backed away, stumbled over his dropped tray, looking out into the food court for The Kid, desperate now, panicked.

“I remember you,” Nevin said. “You were there.”

Darby pushed through the crowd, calling The Kid’s name, his real name, a strange sound to hear, a lost word, until finally he saw The Kid’s big head poking up above the crowd, The Kid standing on a chair, frantically waving his hands, guiding Darby back.

What had happened at the mall? The Kid wasn’t entirely sure. His dad had gotten into an argument with Rhonda Sizemore’s mom in the shoe store and into some kind of fight in the food court. He’d dropped their dinner on the floor. Then they’d left the mall, fast. The Kid was still shaking from what had happened. He was worried that maybe Rhonda’s mom or the security guards at the mall had called the police.

It was too hot in the house, so they ate at the picnic table on the back porch, Chinese takeout they’d picked up on their way home. The Kid wondered what they’d eat when Y2K happened, when all the fast food and takeout places were closed or burned. The newscasts said they needed to start storing canned food, bottled water, powdered milk. They didn’t have any of those things, and even if they did, would his dad know how to fix dinner from them? His mom would. His mom had been a good cook. He and his dad used to play a game at dinnertime that his dad organized. While they were waiting at the kitchen table, his dad would lean in to The Kid and whisper in his ear like he was telling The Kid a secret, giving him secret instructions, and then his dad would count, whispering as his mom approached the table with dinner,
One, two, three,
and then he and his dad would both say,
You’re a good cook, Mom
, as loud as they could, and his mom would act completely surprised, smiling like she’d just won an award, like she’d never heard this game before, and she’d put the pork chops or spaghetti on the table and raise her arms in victory and hug The Kid and kiss The Kid’s dad lightly, just behind the ear.

After they were finished eating, The Kid got his new backpack and made the transfer of materials from the brown paper grocery bag, careful to make sure his dad didn’t see the goggles and facemask he’d borrowed from the toolbox. He pulled out the construction paper and magic markers, spread the paper across the picnic table. He folded each sheet of paper in half, addressed each to a different student in his class and the last one to Miss Ramirez. Twenty-three cards. He pulled Matthew’s
Captain America
comics out of the backpack, looked for good drawings to copy, superheroes in action, running, flying, smashing faces and brick walls.

Some of the time he drew his own characters alongside the copied characters. He drew Smooshie Smith interviewing aliens on the set of his time-machine talk show. He thought of nice things for Smooshie and his guests to say to the card’s recipients, words of encouragement,
You’re very good at sports
, or,
You always have the right math answer
. He could picture Razz reading his
You tell some funny jokes
card and maybe thinking differently about The Kid, thinking that maybe The Kid wasn’t so bad after all. In Rhonda Sizemore’s card he drew Smooshie Smith trying on sneakers in a shoe store, a little joke that only she would get, something that would maybe make what had happened in the mall seem not so bad, make it seem kind of funny and stupid instead.

He sat looking at the blank paper he was going to use for Arizona’s card. Almost afraid to start. If he started drawing and didn’t like what he drew, he’d be short a piece of paper. But he didn’t want to start and then draw something stupid. This was the first time she would see one of his drawings, and he wanted to get it right.

His dad was standing over his shoulder, sipping a cup of coffee he’d made in the kitchen.

“What are you up to, Kid?”

Halloween Cards.

“Can I take a look?”

The Kid shrugged. His dad sat down next to him, unclipped his pager from his belt, set it on the table. He opened the first card on the pile, read it, nodded. Opened the next card.

“These are really good, Kid. You’re becoming a really good artist.”

I’m out of ideas.

His dad got up from the table, took a sip of coffee, swished it in his mouth, spat into the darkness of the yard. Cleared his throat, sat back down. His dad still seemed upset about what had happened at the mall. The Kid wanted to get him out of that feeling. He looked at his dad’s arms, the sleeves of tattoos.

Can I draw some of those?

His dad looked down at the tattoos, turned his arms back and forth, nodded. Held his arms out flat against the table. The Kid started drawing again. In one card, he drew the woodcut waves and the pirate ship and the rowboat. In another, he drew the Cadillac and the scorpion and the sand falling from the sky. He started to draw the red-haired woman with the big boobs, but his dad told him to move on to the next idea.

After a while, they had a system. The Kid would draw something from one of his dad’s arms, write a message to whatever classmate the drawing was for, and start on the next card. His dad would take that last card with his free hand and add in background details with another magic marker: birds in the sky, leaves on the trees, woodcut splashes in the waves. His dad was a good artist. They were a team. The Kid worked his way up and down both of his dad’s arms. He kept returning to the pirate ship, drawing different sections in different cards, cannons firing, the jolly roger flag flapping in the breeze. For Matthew’s card, he drew the black crow with
X
’s for eyes. He drew a word balloon coming from the crow’s open mouth that said,
I’m glad you’re my friend
. Finally, in Arizona’s card, he drew Smooshie Smith standing in front of his applauding studio audience, his arms open wide, a big smile on his face, a word balloon above him that said,
Welcome to Los Angeles
!

The Kid tapped his dad’s knuckles. A letter in black script on each of the first three.

What’s that one mean?

“You know what that one means.”

I forgot.

“You forgot. You think I was born last night?”

I forgot.

“They’re your initials, Kid. Whitley Earl Darby.”

Tell the story.

“You’ve heard the story a million times.”

No I haven’t.

“A billion times.”

Tell it just once more. I forgot.

His dad smiled, his regular lopsided smile. It seemed like maybe he was coming out of being angry from the mall. He got up from the table, stretched his arms over his head, pushed his hands into the bottom of his back. Cleared his throat, spat out into the yard. Finally sat back down next to The Kid.

“Your mom told me to get it. The night you were born.”

Start from the beginning.

“What’s the beginning?”

She didn’t like the tattoos at first.

“She didn’t like the tattoos at first. She wasn’t thrilled with the tattoos. She put up with them.”

But she liked you.

“She didn’t like the tattoos, but she liked me. So she made me promise not to get any more.”

So you promised.

“So I promised. I had enough anyway. But then one night you were born.”

In the hospital.

“In the hospital. Sixth floor, maternity ward. You were born and we couldn’t believe it. We’d never seen anything like you. A little kid who looked just like us, crying and peeing all over the place.”

The Kid felt his face get red, his ears get hot. He always got embarrassed at that part of the story. His dad never left it out.

“That night we were in the hospital room. The doctor was gone, the nurses were gone. It was just your mom and you and me. I was sitting in the chair next to the bed, holding you. You were asleep on my shoulder. Your mom was looking at me in this funny way. She reached over and touched my hand, the hand that was holding your head. She touched these three knuckles, one at a time. Get one here, she said.”

You weren’t supposed to get any more tattoos.

“She changed her mind. She made an exception. She understood why they were important, what function they served.”

What function do they serve?

“They keep track of time. Sometimes things happen and you feel that you need to mark them down.”

So you don’t forget?

“As a reminder. This is what happened. This is something that happened.”

It was almost fully dark in the backyard. His dad turned on the porch light, sat back down at the table. The Kid could hear crickets chirping in the bushes, a cat crying off down the street.

“When she fell asleep, I drove up to the tattoo parlor,” his dad said. “They were closing up. It was really late—really early, actually. I reached through the security gate, knocked on the window because the guy who’d done a lot of my work was in there, sweeping the place out for the night.”

What was his name?

“Gilbert.
Beto
, we called him. He let me in and I told him what had happened, told him about you, about what your mom had said. He stopped sweeping and sat me down in the chair and went to work. The only two people in the shop, the only two people awake on that whole street, probably. Middle of the night, just the buzz of the needle and the neon sign in the window.”

How much did he charge you?

“A million dollars.”

How much did he really charge you?

“He didn’t charge me a thing. He said it was on the house.”

The Kid touched his dad’s knuckles, one at a time. Tried to imagine the buzzing of the needle, of the neon sign.

What did mom say when you got back to the hospital?

“She was still asleep. You were back in the nursery, asleep too. Rows of cribs, all the babies that had been born that day. I wanted to show you the tattoo. I stood outside the window of the nursery and held up my hand so you could see the bandage. I held my hand there and waited for you to open your eyes.”