So Special in Dayville Page 15

  Still standing at the sink, he winces as his fingers probe the soreness of his ribs. It’s been a long time since someone got a drop on him. He contemplates his face in the grimy mirror over the faucet. Could he be getting too old for this game? He does not, after all, have the reflexes he enjoyed as a teenager.

  Steeling himself, he turns his gaze at the mirror into a glare. Nonsense! He has secured almost all his FRCs. That is something no teenager could do. “I will do what is necessary to get this job done.” He shouts silently that he has that much of his father left in his veins! For the first time since he was very small, he searches for Herve’s features in his own reflection. Nothing. Instead, there is something new in his eyes.

  It reminds him of his mother. He drops his gaze, shutting out her expression. What is happening to him? Gabriella is looking out of his eyes, and the coldness of his father is, like a leaking barrel, deserting him. He shoots a wild glance around the room. It’s this place—this Dayville, USA! “It is bewitched,” he says aloud.

  “Oh,” exclaims the crack head, “I like that show!” Her arms clasp her skeletal frame. “Nothing like cooking up some meth with that show’s music runnin’ in my head!”

  Ruiz ignores her. He’s distanced himself from others for so long that he’s not sure if he can survive without being protected by isolation. Herve’s insensitivity was the only thing Ruiz took from his father. Except his life, of course.

  His father’s coldness is what has kept him safe. Ruiz kills, yes, but only out of self-defense. Because every time an opposing gang member challenges him or a chota threatens him, he is ten years old again with his mother dead on the floor. And Herve is turning the gun in his direction, its muzzle black and bottomless.

  Danger. Death. Knowing how easy it is to die, Ruiz kills only to live, resisting, with everything in him, that which might thrust him out of time, into extinction.

  ***

  “Baby,” cries Crystal, “you’re late!” Ajeno, his clothes bloodied and torn, is emerging from the bathroom just as the girl runs back inside the apartment, having zipped over to Beth’s for a quick check. She tries throwing her arms around him. Or, at least, part of him. Failing that, she stands up on her tiptoes, trying to kiss him. He keeps turning his mouth away. “Now don’t be a silly-billy!” she exclaims. “Kiss me. We always kiss when you get home.”

  He grunts, still trying to avoid her lips. But in a mad leap, Crystal scales his sternum to make contact. Then, stunned, she slides down his slope, a skier having lost her balance, an avalanche of tears suffocating her. “Is that roast beef I smell?”

  The fat man’s eyes swivel in their sockets. “Not . . . really.”

  “Oh, Ajeno,” a sob shakes her, “don’t lie to me! I can smell it on your breath.”

  A guilty grin crosses his face. “Oh, right! I ate at Mom’s Diner.”

  “NO, YOU DIDN’T!” screams Crystal. With difficulty, she regains control. But her tears at being betrayed still dribble down her cheeks. “You think I don’t,” sniff, “know what Jack Bulsinki’s roast beef smells like?”

  A sheepish expression crosses his face. “Ooookay, you’re right. Mr. Bulsinki on the second floor gave me a doggy bag,” he giggles, “for the both of us, but I got hungry and ate it all up.” His eyes twirl, trying to avoid hers, as he says dutifully, “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you really?” She throws up her hands. “Do you even know what it feels like to be sorry?”

  With a forehead crease, he appears to think very hard. “Nope, not really.”

  Crystal claps her hands to her face. When hiding doesn’t help though, she stomps off in her cast, sobbing, to shut herself in the bathroom.

  Ajeno belches, confident that she’ll soon be out. He’s just had a massive bowel movement, and it was bean-taco day at the diner. Almost immediately, she flings herself back into the room, gulping air like a race horse. Ajeno hangs his head. “Sorrrrrrry.”

  “Oh, baby!” She clomps just a few steps before flinging herself into his arms. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about . . . you know. Can you ever forgive me?”

  “Sure.” The fat man nods, his childish grin bobbing up and down.

  An electric clock chimes the hour. Gasping, Crystal pushes herself off his belly. “Goodness, is that the time? We’re going to be late!” She turns to check her appearance in the wall mirror hanging on the back of a closet door. She adjusts the starched white crispness of her collar. “You haven’t forgotten the tenants’ meeting tonight, have you?”

  The fat man rolls his head back on his shoulders like a reluctant teenager. “Do I really have to go?”

  “Of course you have to! Don’t you remember the vote tonight on Conrad’s contract? We could lose him as building manager if tenants don’t show support. Property owners look at things like that, you know. Darla Sue told me all about it this afternoon. She’s counting on us to sway a few . . . holdouts.”

  “Huh?”

  Still checking her appearance in the mirror, Crystal pushes her hair back over one ear. “You know . . . convince one or two tenants not to be so negative. And,” she gives him an impish grin, “since these particular tenants are so fond of you, then you’ll be the best person to answer their concerns. Right?”

  Childishly, Ajeno’s mouth puckers as if he’s thinking. “Who?”

  “Who?”

  “Who I got to convince?”

  Crystal carefully puts on pink lipstick. “Oh, honey, don’t worry; I’ll do all the talking.”

  Ten minutes later, she’s knocking on the door of another apartment located two doors down from hers. The door flies open, and talons painted with red polish snatch Crystal’s arm. Crystal calls back over her shoulder while being sucked through the doorway, foot cast and all, “Be out in jiffy, babe!”

  Ajeno is left alone in the hallway. He amuses himself by whistling. As neighbors begin circulating down the hallway toward the elevator, he greets them as they squeeze past his bulk. “Hiya,” he’ll say, waving a meaty paw in their faces. Sometimes, he has to shift positions. The walls feel a bit tight, but if he pulls himself sideways, he can stand without being too badly compressed.

  Meanwhile, inside the Newman apartment, Crystal is experiencing a revelation. She’s literally being reflected by mirrors numbering in the hundreds . . . maybe thousands. Images reflected in images, reflected in images, reflected in . . . “I wanted to talk to you,” she tries refocusing her eyes on Rosie Newman who’s now glaring at her, “about the vote. You are coming to the meeting tonight, aren’t you?” She can’t help but blush as her eyes slip away from the other young woman to greedily travel. The whole apartment appears mirrored—the walls, the ceiling, even the tops of tables.

  Rosie Newman waves her smooth, plump arms, bare in a sleeveless calico dress she’s wearing. “So what the hell is that to you?”

  Crystal can’t help but notice the alien seed of a mole growing out of the other’s right elbow. “Well, Ajeno thought you’d like to vote for Conrad’s renewal as building manager. He’s right outside in the hallway, if you want to talk to him.”

  Like Smu Chen, Rosie has the habit of using her face aggressively. Now she pushes it up into Crystal’s, who can smell her deodorant. She notices how Rosie’s eyes are sliding sideways. It’s with a sense of shock that she realizes how the other woman is actually watching herself get angry in several of the mirrors. Self-fascination mixes visibly with her rage.

  “That fat freak?! You gotta be kidding. What do I care what he thinks?” Newman’s male-model boyfriend, his clothes rumpled, emerges from the bedroom door that has opened behind her. He reaches out to touch Rosie as her voice grows louder. Whirling upon him, she screams, “Don’t touch me! How many times I gotta tell you that?!”

  Crystal checks the time on her phone. “Oh! Sorry, gotta run. The meeting starts in five minutes. See you there! And please, Rosie, think about what I said.” She pauses in clumping her foot cast to the door to smile. “We’re s
tronger together than we are apart.”

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning dawns with Crystal sitting. Just that—sitting. She’s collapsed into a chair by the apartment’s only window. Ajeno, still asleep on the mattress. is snoring loudly, a sound reminiscent of a water buffalo with a head cold. She digs her small butt into the chair cushion.

  The meeting the night before had been a complete and total disaster. Completely and irrevocably, a catastrophe.

  She shakes her head, thinking about how it all started so well. The tenant vote in support of Conrad passed by just one vote. Cheers rose wildly from those who’d crowded together in the downstairs lobby. Noisily, they clinked bottles of beer. Drunken shouts even erupted praising the candidate.

  But, alas, Conrad would have none of it. He interpreted the close vote as a humiliating loss of confidence in his leadership. “Really?” His expression turned petulant as Crystal, the official vote-counter, had held up the last vote in his favor. “Are you saying I won by one lousy, stinking vote?!”

  The crowd hushed as Crystal’s own smile faltered. “Uh . . . yes?”

  “One . . . lousy . . . vote.” He sent a withering glare over the crowd. A swig from his flask followed as Darla Sue began plucking at his sleeve. “No!” He swung his arm outside her reach. “No, I won’t be silent!” With a swiftness surprising in a middle-aged drunk, he then leaped up onto a nearby chair. This allowed him access to, on wobbly knees, the old reception counter in the lobby.

  “Conrad!” Crystal tried reasoning with him. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should reconvene tomorrow night. You won’t have time now for your acceptance speech before curfew.”

  But the drunken building manager, biting his lip in concentration, instead struggled to stand on the tall marble-topped counter. Upon pushing himself upright, he appeared to those below as having reached gigantic heights. He swayed unsteadily like a construction crane about to topple. “I . . . will . . . not . . . be . . . silent,” he intoned. His hands reached out like a modern-day messiah. “Why,” he cried piteously, “have you forsaken me?” A sweep of his arms out to his sides sent him teetering.

  “Oh!” murmured the crowd.

  He regained his balance, still talking: “When your toilets are clogged, do I not clear ’em? And when bulbs in our hallways go dark, do I not bring light? Or when pipes burst, do I not stop the floods? What more do you need in order to see me as I am?”

  Crystal tried catching Darla Sue’s eye, but the other woman, hiding her face, was edging away. She disappeared into the crowd, heading for the exit. “Conrad,” Crystal tugged on his pants cuff, “your supporters bought beer for your big win. Come on down, why don’t you? We can lift a bottle to your victory.”

  For a moment, it seemed as if the evening could be saved. Conrad, looking bemused, was sinking to his knees when suddenly he shot back up.

  “Oh!” rose from the startled crowd.

  “A bottle!” he roared. “Yes, I’ll share a bottle with my people, but only if we are . . . ONE.” He vainly tried knitting his hands together with his fingers. But the feat of coordination proved too great. “One! I call for another vote!” When a loud belch punctuated this proclamation, he grinned. “Once more into the breaches, my friends! Who’s with me?”

  Ten minutes later, Conrad fainted dead away when Crystal, by now softly crying while holding the last counted ballot, announced that he’d lost.

  Even now, ten hours later, she still shudders. The sight of his body falling helplessly from the full height of the lobby desk, through the air, is seared into her brain. Even now, thinking about it, she wants to hide her eyes. Anything not to see.

  But then, certain death was miraculously prevented by Ajeno. The fat man sedately stepped forward to catch Conrad in his great arms, indulgently cradling the drunk like a sleepy puppy. “Silly man.” Ajeno jiggled the sleeping Conrad as the latter burped. “You don’t have to leave. Leaving is bad. We belong . . . here.”

  Remembering how Ajeno said this, Crystal sits very still in her chair. She’s waiting. Trying to forget all the unpleasantness, she waits for what she waits for every morning. Her brain strains so as not to miss the moment. An inhalation of air calms her.

  The clock ticks. There! Over there, in the corner. A flash of sunlight—a tiny spot of yellow jiggling on the threadbare carpeting. She watches, awe stealing over her. Slowly, but quickly, the speck grows to the size of a coin. Then a cantaloupe. Now a baby’s blanket, a sofa, a . . .

  Breathlessness takes her. Now the whole wall is glowing, its scuffed paint awash in the sun’s luminosity. Shivers vibrate her sternum, the radiance taking her in, lifting her out of herself. “Oh, God.”

  A gasp escapes her Audrey Hepburn lips. It’s so beautiful! But it’s not just this beauty that gets her out of bed so early every morning. Something in her aches. She wants to share this light, to take it inside herself. To grow it. To nurture it.

  ***

  Leaning back in a folding chair, a government agent sips cold coffee from a cheap disposable cup. “So, what do you think?” He’s contemplating John Doe, who’s sitting a few feet away, knitting. “Time frame’s right. He confessed to me ’bout starting work at the diner just a few weeks ago.”

  John Does inhales deeply. The air in the police station’s conference room smells stale. “True, true, but we can’t terminate everyone in Dayville who started a job three weeks ago. Hell, even that’s an assumption. Just because the FRCs started leaking then doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when our man got to town.”

  “True. But,” the agent shakes his head, “I don’t know, there’s just something hinky about this guy.”

  “How do you mean?”

  The agent leans in confidentially. “Last night, I talked to my contact down there on Tenth, where this diner is, and I ask him ’bout this guy. This,” his eyes flicker to a nearby file folder, “Jenofonte Manuel Garcia. I say, ‘Hey, tell me about this guy,’ and you know what he tells me?”

  “Obviously not.” Doe starts a new row on a scarf he’s knitting for his father. “Skip to the postcoital cuddling, ’kay?”

  Shrugging, the agent lays it all out for him. “He tells me the guy’s some sort of a freak. Enormously fat and, get this, even though he’s got a Mexican name, he’s as pale as my Irish granny and can’t hardly speak a word of Spanish!”

  “Hmmm,” says Doe thoughtfully. “Doesn’t really sound like a cartel operative, does he? I mean, he practically demands attention. A natural target for official suspicion.” He breaks off, looking thoughtful. “Of course, if the cartel’s as smart as they think they are, then they might just send someone so outlandish that we’d never look at him as a possibility.” His eyes brighten as, forgetting his scarf, he exchanges a glance with the agent across the table. “We’d be so certain he was the worst choice for a trafficker that he’d turn out to be the perfect choice!”

  The agent leaps to his feet. “So, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I say,” declares Doe, beginning to rise from his chair, his sewing project falling from his lap, “to go forth with your termination team and neutralize this godless trafficker in purloined dat—” Doubling over, he makes futile grabs at his knitting. “Ah, hell, now where did my yarn ball go?”

  ***

  Back in their apartment at the Eden Palace, the light fades. Crystal drags herself around within its four walls, sluggish as usual after her ecstasy. Ajeno still snores as, softly, she readies herself for work and closes the apartment door behind her. Outside, dirty food wrappers litter the stoop, which only adds to her gloom. Why can’t everything in her life be as beautiful as that light?

  She pauses just outside the lobby doors to survey the street. It annoys her how the skin beneath her cast itches like crazy. But past that distraction, she hears two men talking. They’re standing at the bottom of the stoop.

  From behind her, Dr. McKenzie, 212B, brushes past her elbow. His hurried descent down the stairs is explained
by a cab idling at the curb. Bumping into a tall, dark man, Doc McKenzie takes a second to extricate himself before turning back to Crystal. The other man resumes crossing the street. The doctor’s eyes are probing Crystal’s torso as he wrestles open the cab’s rear door. “Good morning,” he calls up warmly. “Haven’t seen you lately.”

  His implied question hanging, the girl stiffly nods. “Grading papers takes up a lot of my time.” Then, with a casual wave, he disappears, swallowed up in the yellow taxi. She relaxes as the car merges into traffic. The middle-aged doctor always makes her uneasy. His specialty being mastectomies, when they meet, he usually eyes her breasts as if planning their immediate removal.

  Crystal shakes herself. A bad mood, her momma always said, is worse than being stuck with a torn umbrella during a hurricane! She takes a deep breath. Recognition brings some relief as she identifies the two men talking below.

  With a hand supporting his lower back, Jackman is leaning up against the brownstone pillar at the sidewalk. He’s talking to their regular garbageman, Eddie Lankowitz, a devout Christian evangelic. “It’s a natural human inclination, an evolutionary imperative,” he tells Eddie. “I mean, if people weren’t always reaching outside themselves, then we’d all still be in caves!”

  Forcing a cheery tone, she clump . . . stops, clump . . . stops all the way down the stairs. Her voice fills an empty spot in their conversation. “You mean, if we weren’t reaching beneath the apple skin?”

  “That’s right, sure!” Jackman’s big, dark eyes go slantwise as he cocks his head. “I mean, we’re all drawn to the strange, aren’t we? Even as we’re reaching for a stick to beat out its brains, we’re hungering to touch the face of . . .”

  Crystal, feeling herself being watched, hesitates while looking up and down the street. “God?” She sees the shadow of a man outlined against a stoop across the street. Her eyes shy away when she recognizes Ruiz, the handsome man from the diner.