So Special in Dayville Page 3

  These homes, adorning upper-class lives, are even today backlit by impossibly green lawns, lush roses, and erect tulips. Guards, carrying automatic weaponry, patrol their tall brick walls to keep out the riff-raff. But yes, even within this incestuously small group, Conrad had been royalty.

  Women with coiffed hair and immaculately painted fingernails had pled for his advice on everything from what daffodils to plant for the next spring’s show to what color frock they should buy to impress the neighbors.

  Knowing all this, a flummoxed Crystal couldn’t help but demand how the middle-aged man had come to manage the Eden Palace. “I mean,” she gushed after first meeting him, “you’re just so talented!”

  Slowly, Conrad had arched an eyebrow with rehearsed drama. “You want to know why I quit?” He’d looked about them. “Can you keep a secret?” His whisper sounded vaguely obscene as he blew alcohol-laced breath into her face. She’d tried not to inhale as he grinned unpleasantly. “Wasn’t like I really had a choice, did I? I had to leave. The monotony was fucking deadly!” He threw out his arms. “I mean, every freaking fall, it was plant bulbs! Every spring, it was plant annuals! Every summer, it was water, water, water till I wanted to blow my frigging brains out!” He struck a pose. “You know the only thing that kept me from doing it? From ending it all with a bullet between the eyes?”

  Even dizzier now from a lack of oxygen, Crystal again gulped. “Your . . . wife, Darla Sue?”

  “Hell no!” He lurched away from her, heading for the stairwell. “It was in the middle of a hot, dry summer! Entirely the wrong conditions to fertilize the earth with my bodily fluids, thank you very much. Might’ve completely thrown off the pH in the soil.”

  “Darla Sue,” Crystal now takes a long sip of her cola, “does Conrad ever say he’s sorry? I mean, when he does something wrong?”

  The other woman snorts. “My husband is incapable of thinking himself as ever being in the wrong.” She holds up a finger. “Wait, I’ll amend that. Once—just once—he confessed to being sorry.”

  “Why? Did you two have a fight or something?”

  Darla Sue adds a healthy dollop from her flask to the glass. “Naw. He was just sorry last winter for not letting a bum sleep on the heat grate out front. You know, the grate next to the stoop?”

  “Yeah, I know the one you mean.” Crystal leans forward. “But I don’t get it; why was he sorry?”

  Darla Sue belches after a large gulp. “Well, basically, cause the bum froze to death back in the alley, next to the dumpster.”

  “No! Why, that’s just terrible. Poor man!”

  “Yeah, it wasn’t Conrad’s best week. Made trash collection a bitch.”

  Crystal studies her as if making up her mind about something. Finally, she asks softly, “Do you think it’s normal not knowing how to be sorry?”

  “Most natural thing in this world, honey.” Darla Sue takes a sip from her damp glass before looking about, confused. “If you’re a sociopath or psycho.” She starts patting her pockets as if frisking herself. “Have you seen my little bottle?”

  “No!” Crystal lowers her voice even though they’re alone in the apartment. “You’re not serious, are you?”

  “Yeah, I’m serious.” Darla Sue’s lipstick twists in irritation. “I can’t find it, I tell you.” Her free hand, the one not burdened by a glass, starts hitting the newspaper mounds on the table. “I just had it a minute ago! Where the fu—”

  “Isn’t that it?” Crystal nods to the glint of silver winking from Darla Sue’s cleavage. The other woman laughs in obvious relief. She retrieves the flask and kisses it as if it were a lost child returned to her loving arms.

  But Crystal tries to keep her on track. “Darla Sue! This is important. Now, what were you saying ’bout not being sorry?”

  The older woman tips the flask over the edge of her cola glass. “Hell, I don’t know, honey. It’s not like I keep track of what I say, now, do I?”

  “You said if you can’t feel guilt then you’re either a sociopath or a psycho.”

  “Really?!” Darla Sue refastens the cap of the flask. “That don’t say much for Conrad, does it? I mean . . .” She takes a long drink from her glass, a small satisfied smile creasing her lips. “. . . that man’s never apologized in his life. Not one single solitary—”

  Crystal interrupts, “But didn’t you say he felt bad about the bum?”

  Darla Sue blinks. “What bum?”

  “The bum that died back in the alley, next to the dumpster.”

  Her mouth hanging open, Darla Sue stares at Crystal, her eyes squinting and then going very wide as if to focus. “Are you telling me that a bum’s died in our alley?”

  The young woman nods. “Well, yes, I mean I was sitting right here when I heard about it. And then . . . where are you going?”

  Darla Sue, weaving slightly, has risen hurriedly to her feet. “I gotta find Conrad about this bum business. It’s trash day, don’tcha know?”

  “But Darla Sue,” Crystal calls after her, “he died months ago!”

  Sharp heel taps make a beeline for the fire stairs. “Ah, hell! That means it’ll be an unholy mess to clean up. I swear, folks seeing those hazmat suits always overreact. Honey, just see yourself out. I’ll talk . . . toxic . . . Conrad’s fault . . .” Her mumbles cease abruptly with the clanging closure of the fire door.

  Crystal looks around the mothball-haunted apartment. “Darla Sue?”

  ***

  Ajeno, his head down, lips bunched, stands in front of a diner on Tenth Street. It’s the fourth ad he’s answered this afternoon. Workers at the other three places—a car repair shop, a tailor’s, and another diner—had all laughed at him. The fat man had not minded that, but they had not wanted to talk afterward. Instead, they’d made it very clear that he was to leave.

  An empty feeling blossoms in his gut. He feels a need to fill it immediately. Fearing he might float into nothingness, he wrenches the door open. The stink of rancid oil and burned onions hits him like a hammer. “Yummy!” Here, at last, is a place where he feels a sense of belonging.

  ***

  An hour later, in an alley across town, cardboard boxes with counterfeit labels of big-name shoe companies lie scattered underfoot like the victims of a massacre. It’s the end of the afternoon shift at an adjacent factory. Workers, shoulders bowed, backs bent, pour out its doors. Those who’ve made their daily quota of shoes look smug. Or at least more smug than those sporting fresh bruises, who’ve had rubber soles, banded together by the dozen, thrown at their heads for failing their production allotment.

  A tall, dark man in his thirties cuts through this dejected crowd like a hungry shark. And, while not deliberately contemptuous, his attitude is dismissive. He brushes past the factory workers as if they’re little more than clouds of tiny winged insects sent to annoy him. Quickly, Enrique Ruiz finds his target: a nervous, worn-looking man standing by the door of a nearby cantina.

  Latin music leaks out onto concrete as the two men talk.

  “I don’t know,” says the old man. Ruiz feels the other’s anxiety like an itch on the back of his own neck. “I could lose my job for this,” worries the old man before adding emphatically, “No! No, it’s too dangerous.”

  Ruiz takes him by the elbow. They wander away from the busy doorway. “Que pasa? I’m not paying you to smuggle drugs, am I? Or to shoot someone, eh?” When the other dutifully shakes his head, Ruiz clarifies, “I’m not even asking you to take something. I ask only to listen. To listen to you speak the numbers I need. What is that?” He makes a hand gesture as if to flick dust from the other’s shirt. “Nothing. Just noise. How can noise be dangerous? It’s not a thing.”

  The old man licks his lips. “But if they find out . . .”

  Ruiz pats him on the arm. “How? How will they find out? What trace is there of noise?”

  “You promise it’s safe? My wife is ill. I can’t afford to lose my job.” Hands shaking, he allows Ruiz to push him behind the dumpster.
“The doctors ask for more money every week. We can’t afford . . .” His eyes widen when Ruiz flashes a roll of cash. “How . . . how much will you pay for this noise?”

  Silently, Ruiz peels off two large-denomination bills. He stuffs them into the old man’s trouser pockets. “Half now,” he says softly. “Half later. It is a deal?”

  A preoccupied look haunts the other’s face. If Ruiz had to guess, he’d bet the old man was mentally counting the debts he could clear. The lined face, weary about the eyes, finally nods, his hand stealing inside the pocket as if to touch the cash. “Yes. I will do it.”

  Ruiz nods with a grim smile. “This is good. We will talk soon?” At the other’s nod, he glances about before emerging from behind the dumpster. Satisfaction carries him past the knots of workers to disappear into a network of back alleys. Only vaguely does he become aware of a threat. At the end of one empty alley, he whirls around, his hand retrieving the gun sticking in his belt.

  In front of him, nothing. Well, except for a parking meter he doesn’t remember walking past. But beside that, nothing. Hadn’t though there been a noise? His eyes strain, but in the early afternoon glare, he sees nothing. The space, gray with grime, appears empty except for trash. He’d been so sure. What was that soft scuffling sound? It’d reminded him of a sneaker sliding along pavement. He keeps the gun in his hand, unwilling yet to admit it is another false alarm. Just the night before he had felt himself being followed. And then, like now, he’d swung around only to find himself alone.

  He takes several deep breaths to slow his racing heart. It is nothing. Still, he has heard things on the street for several days now. A new player in town, people are saying. He keeps a firm grip on the automatic until, disgusted with himself, he spits at a rat nosing under crumpled newsprint. “People,” he says dismissively, “they think with their imaginations, not with their eyes!”

  Sticking the gun back in his belt, he makes an effort to relax. He pinches his stiff neck with unmerciful fingers. Slowly, tension fades as he glances upward. It’s an automatic gesture. And there, overhead, in a darkening sky creamy with smog, hangs the faint outline of the moon. The moving speck of a passenger jet plows the early evening sky. His high cheekbones quiver. Ruiz watches the speck cross the sky, going east of town.

  As a boy growing up on Mexican streets, he’d fantasized what it would be like—to ride a machine such as this, a moving star in which to soar above the clouds. Would it, he wondered, feel as a bird felt? A falcon circling, riding thermals higher and higher in the sky? Ruiz decided then that to reach such heights was likely to fall upward into the cold, inky current of space.

  But his childhood certainty had been shaken when he actually flew on a commercial jet for the first time. It was a trauma even more disturbing than his mother’s death. He hadn’t believed much in growing up, but he had believed in the sanctity of flight. To fly was to transcend gravity, to bathe in clouds. To see, through a thinning atmosphere, the face of God.

  But no, it had been all about being crammed into a tight metal cylinder, its interior lights too bright to see stars outside his porthole window. And then being catapulted from one bland airport to another, indistinguishable, bland airport. The tediousness of the experience had troubled him for a very long time. Was his faith in the cathedral of night so misplaced?

  ***

  A short time later and three streets over, Noah Jackman sits alone on the stoop of the Eden Palace, hungry for company. Crystal has spotted him upon her approach with grocery sacks. She quickens her step. It’s a rare privilege to find the older man alone. Jackman has been the undisputed wise man of the Eden Palace for over thirty years. Sixty-three, with coffee-colored skin and a bad back, he carries wisdom and a bleeding ulcer in his potbellied stomach.

  Passersby, drawn by his magnetism, always seem to cluster about him like fleas around a dying mule. They come to hear Jackman pontificate. Leaning back against the stone steps, he’ll twinkle his black eyes before discoursing on all matters philosophical. He’s retired now. But the perception of his once having been a college professor is furthered by the sweaters he wears, which are adorned with leather elbow patches.

  People often ask, “What did you teach?” To which he replies, beaming beneficently, “Life, children, life.”

  Crystal always enjoys his company. She has for the last three years she’s lived at the Eden Palace. Unsure who gave him his nickname of the Sage, she thinks it suits him. A sage, after all, is not as stuffy and unapproachable as a king. But he’s still an authority. More than that, he’s the hope for a kingdom’s future; upon his moral compass does peace rest.

  “Oh, it’s good to get off my feet!” she exclaims while collapsing beside him on the concrete step. Her sacks fall over her lap and down her sides until she appears half-buried. “I thought my arms were about to fall off.”

  Jackman’s fatherly grin warms her internal organs. “Child,” he says, “you are the busiest bee this old hive has seen in quite a while.”

  Laughing, she tells him all about her day at work. He listens attentively as, around them, freshly ignited streetlamps burn merrily over the heads of quickly moving pedestrians frantic to reach home before curfew.

  Curfew is when the street lights are shut off, clicking to darkness one by one. Curfew is part of the mayor’s program to abolish nonworking hours. “If we don’t pander to the lack of light,” he tells constituents, “then it can’t control us, can it? Plus . . .” He holds out his palms like an honest man. “We just can’t afford the electric bill, if you really wanna know the truth.”

  Crystal falls silent for a moment finally. The constant stream of pedestrians is having an almost hypnotic effect on both of them. “Do you think,” she asks, “it’s wrong to watch people when they don’t know you’re doing it?”

  Jackman takes a deep breath of night air. The whites of his eyes flicker as he waves a lazy hand over the street scene. “Why should it? I mean, look at that place over there.” He points across the street to the glowing-yellow windows, all lit up, of an apartment building. In some squares of light, tiny figures move, performing motions meaningless to onlookers. “So what if we watch ’em? Aren’t they watching us? We look up and they look down. Most natural thing in the world, ain’t it?”

  Reluctantly, Crystal nods. “I guess so.” She looks down, almost cringing inside the dark heap of sacks covering her. “Silly being self-conscious, I guess.”

  “Not at all.” Jackman chuckles in the dark. “We’re all the same. Like to look, but not to be seen. Don’t I suck my gut in every time someone takes my photograph?”

  “Do you really?” The girl’s eagerness rings along the emptying sidewalks. “I’ve never thought of you as vain!”

  Jackman doesn’t answer immediately. He’s still staring intently at the twinkling lights of the apartment house on the corner. Fearing that she’s offended him, Crystal opens her mouth when he says quietly, “Vanity is just knowing that we’re alone. All alone in this world. It’s our defense against chaos.”

  “Chaos?”

  “That’s right,” he nods, “the chaos of everything outside our own skins.”

  “Oh?” Crystal shivers while gathering her packages. “Sounds kind of bleak, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess it does.”

  “Don’t give me that crap!” An old man’s angry voice accompanies the tap, tap, tap of an old woman’s cane. The two people hobbling down the dark sidewalk have almost reached the stoop of the Eden Palace. “You were the last one to see her alive.”

  A thin, reedy voice snaps back, “I was only the last, cause you’d gone. You haven’t forgot how you’d left for a ‘quick’ run to the corner drugstore for her painkillers, have you? You never did explain why it took five hours to complete a ten-minute errand, did you?!”

  Jackman takes a handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose. After snorting his sinuses clear, he greets the two newcomers. “Sam.” He pockets his handkerchief as the old man reaches the ste
ps. “Muriel.”

  The frail elderly woman politely returns the nod. She focuses on Jackman while appearing not to notice how Sam, doddering slightly, has stopped to help her up the steps. “You’re a true gentleman, Mr. Jackman.” Muriel gives him a grateful wave as Sam, both hands on her buttocks, successfully pushes her up the last step. The old man wheezes in the artificial lighting cast by heavy fixtures to each side of the double entry door. Patting him gently on the back, her eyes still averted, Muriel smiles sweetly down on Jackman and Crystal. “And the Eden Palace is a better place for you being here.”

  “My pleasure, Miss Zielinski. You two have a good night, okay?”

  Regally, Muriel nods as the old man, having caught his breath, shepherds her inside the building.

  Crystal gathers her sacks with a great rustling of paper. “Guess I better be getting inside too. If Ajeno’s back from job-hunting, he’ll be wanting more Meeper Cheeper Chocolate Peepers!”

  “Oh, well, must’nt keep him waiting for those.” Jackman’s smile is wan but affectionate. “They’re everyone’s favorite!”

  She gaily wishes him a good night before flying through the double doors into an overly bright lobby.

  The older man finds himself alone on the stoop. Around him, with the beginning of curfew, the pavement has emptied, streetlamps turning off. He lifts a lonely gaze once more. And even though smog partially obscures the night sky, the brightest stars continue to shine as faint, milky twinkles overhead.

  ***

  Staring up at these same stars a few streets over, Ruiz thinks about their names. As a child, he’d made up many names for the stars—the Bolo for the three stars making a vertical line like a man’s necktie. Then there was the Taza Grande and La Tacita, La Minifalda, Uno Sin Brazos, El Skater, La Serpiente, and there, high in the sky, in the time of year nearest to his mother’s death, was the brightest star of all, looking straight down at him. This one he’d called La Madre Ojo.