So Special in Dayville Page 9

  “What is underneath?”

  “Ah, child, asking that leads to wisdom.” Sniffling, he stuffs his handkerchief back into his pocket. “And to a bottomless pit droppin’ ya straight to madness. Trust me—don’t ask if you ain’t got the price of admission!” A shudder takes him and, quickly, he retrieves his handkerchief for another explosion of mucus. “God, my sinuses are acting up!”

  ***

  “The doctor,” declares Sam as he pushes out the double lobby door of the Eden Palace, “said she could have lasted for another six months.” He leans closer to the old woman’s ear. “Six months!”

  “I’m not deaf,” Muriel complains. Her cane makes a tapping noise as she hobbles down the steps toward the girl and Jackman. “And anyway, who’s debating that? I know my sister could’ve lived another six months. Heck, she probably would’ve lasted a year if you hadn’t killed her.”

  Sam’s face reddens dangerously. “I . . . did . . . not . . . kill . . . my . . . wife!”

  “Well, who’s saying you did?”

  “You did!”

  Muriel stops on the last step, swaying as she thinks. “Oh, yes. I guess I did.” She eyes him suspiciously. “Which I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had good reason!”

  Jackman makes a show of again blowing his nose. After a thorough rubdown with his handkerchief, he tucks the cotton back into a pants pocket. His smile encompasses the elderly twosome. “Muriel. Sam. Out taking the evening air?”

  The old woman withdraws her hand from Sam’s grasp so Jackman can help her down the last step. “Ah, Mr. Jackman,” she trills, “as always, so nice to be around a true gentleman!”

  Sam, trailing behind, is buttoning up his coat. As the old woman pauses, chatting amicably with Noah, Sam brusquely digs a scarf out of her coat pocket. He grunts from the exertion while twining it gently around her neck. She ignores him as she listens raptly to Noah’s discussion of apple skins.

  “Time we got on.” Sam tucks the end of the scarf into her coat. “Gotta beat curfew.”

  Instantly, Muriel wishes Noah and Crystal a good night while nodding. She takes Sam’s arm as they hobble down the street together.

  Crystal watches them speculatively. “How long has her sister been dead?”

  “1985,” comes Jackman’s prompt reply. “She had cancer. Terminal. They knew that right off.” He follows the girl’s gaze as the two hunched shapes disappear into a smoggy mist. “But those two have built a lifetime blaming each other. All over a mercy killing neither did over thirty years ago.”

  “But why?”

  Jackman raises his eyebrows. “Maybe outta guilt for not doing it.” He sniffs, staring down at the palms of his hands. “I remember Mrs. Bratcher. She was a real nice lady.”

  ***

  The next morning finds the mayor parking his new car at a safe distance from a construction site. He hurries to the work area, puffed up with political ambitions. His goal is to direct the job foreman, who, in turn, will direct the project manager, who, in turn, will direct the bulldozers.

  Soon, grave markers of weathered limestone, etched faintly with names and dates, are falling beneath dozer blades—so many dominoes knocked over. Amid the roar, the broken teeth of chiseled memories crumple into steel buckets.

  The politician’s handsome face contorts, shouting into the noise, “Housing’s for the living, not the dead, ain’t it? I mean, the dead don’t vote, do they?”

  “I guess,” concedes the job foreman. “Have to say, though, some of the men don’t think too highly of it.”

  The politician sniffs. “Pure sentimentality. I read of a big-city mayor out West who did this very same thing. He was later elected to governor! Ran on a platform of ‘Converting Bones to Homes.’” Inhaling deeply, the handsome man doesn’t notice when the job foreman spits dangerously close to his shiny new shoes.

  “Some of that lumber can be reused, can’t it?” Critically, the politician eyes the raw earth. Pieces of wood stick up through it at intervals where coffins have splintered. “Good seasoned oak’s hard to come by these days.” He grins and slaps the foreman on the back. “Probably make good trim pieces. Hell, I wouldn’t mind using some of it myself!” He gazes tenderly over a pitiably small desiccated corpse, half-covered in dirt, to where his new car is parked in the distance. “Sometimes,” he says more to himself than the foreman, “the old classics are best.”

  A frown then gathers on his brow. Several news crews are pulling up beside his Caddy, people erupting from them like ants boiling out of a nest. The mayor shies slightly as they rush up to him. “I assure you,” he holds up his hands as if being mugged, “that I have full legal authority to move forward with my vision to expand Dayville’s low-income housing stock.”

  “Mr. Mayor . . . Mr. Mayor!” cries the crowd of three reporters.

  Lawson, from Channel 8 News, wins the politician’s attention. “Mr. Mayor,” he shoves a microphone in the other man’s face, “are you saying that you have full approval for this from the city council?”

  The mayor grins uneasily, remembering the empty mansions. “Depends on what you mean by ‘full,’ son. You have to understand that the—” He catches himself with a sudden glint of cunning in his eyes. “Why, yes! I can say definitively, and without hesitation, that no councilman or woman will be stepping forward to block these plans to serve our good, homeless Dayvillians!”

  ***

  Across town, Crystal sits at her desk. Clicky sounds fill the small classroom—the rhythm of tiny fingers typing on keyboards. She studies her students over the edge of a textbook on Greek mythology.

  The children have been unusually withdrawn for the past several days. They don’t speak to her. Nor do they speak to one another. Stuck in digital worlds, they interact only with their computers or cell phones, their only animation—a smile, a frown, a stifled laugh—coming from reading a screen.

  The girl’s troubled by this retraction from the real world. With a peremptory throat clearing, she calls the Dobson boy up to her desk. “Turner,” she says softly, “I just wanted to check on how you’re doing. You haven’t mentioned Charley lately. How is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Charley, your . . . uh,” she assumes a bright expression, “your friend.”

  “Oh, him.”

  She retrieves a paperback book from beneath the pile of last week’s quizzes. “Yes. Well, I found this at our school library.” She holds it out to him. “It’s about caring for rodents. I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  Turner shrugs, his freckled face avoiding her inquisitive gaze. “Charley’s dead. That man got ’im.”

  “Oh, Turner!” Genuine sympathy makes her reach out to him. “I’m so sorry. You two were close, I know.”

  The boy turns to go back to his seat. “He was just a rat.”

  ***

  Smiling genially, the mayor has escaped the reporters at the soon-to-be converted cemetery. It takes him fifteen minutes, but finally he’s knocking on the right door at the Dudley Do-Right Dayville Inn.

  The door opens to reveal John Doe. The Fed’s astonishment is evident. “What?!” Doe juts his face over the threshold to glance suspiciously, first right and then left, down the hotel’s long hallway. Satisfied, he seizes the politician by his lapel to drag him inside the room. “How the hell did you find me? This op’s on the QT, on a strictly need-to-know basis. Do you have any idea how many agents’ lives you’ve endangered by exposing our location?”

  The mayor, still smiling, tries to glad-hand the other man. But Doe keeps slapping away his outstretched hand. The former explains after a slap, “OW! I just came by,” slap, “OW! to see if you’d,” (slap), “OW! like to chat more on our sit . . .,” slap, slap, slap, slap, “OW! OW! OW! OW! . . . uation?”

  “Just give it to me straight.” Belligerently, Doe leans his skeletal frame into the mayor. “Where’s the leak? Who’s the turncoat, the Judas, the traitor, the,” he showers the mayor with spit, “mole who’s given up our location? Tel
l me quick fore I waterboard ya!”

  The politician’s still shaking his sore hand. “What’re ya talking about?” He hooks the thumb of his good hand over the shoulder of his gold polyester suit coat. “I just drove by the town’s three hotels.” He blows on the inflamed skin of his much-slapped hand. “This was the only one with a dozen powder-blue SUVs parked out front.”

  John Doe steps back involuntarily. “Huh.” He walks backward five steps and then forward five steps. “I see.” Cocking his head, he appraises the politician with a grudging admiration. “You know, Mr. Mayor, you ain’t as dumb as you look.”

  “Thank you.”

  The Weatherman, still nodding, finally seems to notice the other’s attire. Brushing a speck of lint from the sleeve of his own polyester coat, he raises his eyebrows appreciatively. “Snappy suit there.”

  “Why, thank you.” Graciously, the mayor makes a small wave at Doe’s outfit. “Your ensemble is equally riveting.”

  The Weatherman shrugs this off modestly. “It’s nothing really. Just a good, honest, petroleum-based fashion product.” A clearing of his throat indicates he’s now ready to get down to business. “So, what can I do for you?”

  The politician waves him to a chair beside the sofa upon which he, himself, stretches out. “Don’t want to take up your time, but the truth is, you threw me a bit with that whole ‘let’s-destroy-the-town’ plan.”

  Retrieving a notebook from his pants pocket, Doe nods affably. “Yes, I can see how that could happen.”

  “Great! So you see my point.” The mayor, staring up at the ceiling, folds his hands over the suit’s matching gold vest. “I gotta lot of conflicted feelings ’bout this plan. I mean, Dayville’s my home, right? My house is here, my constituents are here, my wife’s here—not that that much matters—but you can see where I’m going with this, right?”

  “You want a thirty-minute head start before the dam’s blown?”

  The handsome face beams, still contemplating the ceiling. “Exactly.”

  Doe waves a pencil over his small pad of paper. “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll text you,” scribble, scribble, “this many minutes before blasting.” He rips the sheet off the notepad and hands it to the mayor.

  “Not bad, not bad,” replies the mayor, nodding. Removing a pen from his breast pocket, he sits up to scribble something on the paper slip. “But I’d feel more comfortable with this figure.” He slides it across the coffee table toward the other man.

  Doe lets out a deep breath before conceding. “Tell you what, let’s split the difference.” He shoots out his hand to the mayor. “Is it a deal?”

  “Deal!”

  ***

  That afternoon, Crystal goes by the diner. It’s the only day of the week that Jones, the manager, closes the place early. He’s taking a class at the local junior college on bonsai gardening and hates to be late. The diner will be open until seven thirty. Just late enough for Crystal to grab a bite and see Ajeno in action.

  Even through the afternoon crowd, Jones notices her immediately as she opens the front door. And when Ajeno waves her back toward the grill, the manager pretends to lay down the law. “No fraternization on the job!” But then he leers, saying she can wait for Ajeno in the office. “My office,” he says suggestively, holding open the door for her to enter.

  She eyes him doubtfully, as if he’s claiming that termites have eaten his homework. “Really, Mr. Jones?”

  “Sure,” he leans in closer, giving her a magnified view of nose hair, “why not?”

  She steps back primly, his manner having reminded her of a class troublemaker. “Thank you, but I’ll wait out front.”

  “You mean take a seat from a paying customer?” His eyes slowly deliberate over the length of her body. “That doesn’t sound right, does it?” Jones licks his lips, slipping a hand inside her sweater.

  Crystal raises an eyebrow. Had any of her students actually been present, they’d have recognized the mannerism with some anxiety. “Mr. Jones,” she says tartly, “you will remove your hand.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then,” she says with a sigh, “I will be forced to knee you in the groin with enough force to damage your genitalia permanently. Legally, I’m obliged to inform you that I’ve been expertly trained.” Her gaze travels out to nearby tables where people are eating. “Your peers, in any case, will witness my disciplinary action. Do we understand each other?”

  Jones stares at her. “Are you serious?”

  “Do I look serious, Mr. Jones?”

  He steps back, his arm dropping. “Hey, I was just thinking about your comfort. You want to sit out front on some ass-smeared chair coated in years of grease, that’s fine by me!”

  With a crisp nod, Crystal calls over her shoulder to Ajeno, “Baby, I’ll be waiting out front.”

  Ajeno pauses in the act of flipping a pancake, a broad grin plastered on his face in contemplating the airborne flapjack. “No problemo.”

  Crystal begins threading her way through the crowded tables. Ruiz, ringing up a ticket for three fried eggs, hash browns, and toast, keeps an eye on her. He likes how she handled Jones. He also likes the demure grace of how she moves in the cramped space. She reminds him of a small black cat. One with white feet. He half-expects to see a long tail dance above the heads of customers. Softly, he calls to her, “Hay una silla en la esquina.”

  She responds politely, “Gracias.” Upon taking the offered corner chair, she primly folds her hands and stares patiently into nothingness.

  The tingling in his groin surprises Ruiz. He’s not often attracted to pale North American women. They mostly strike him as unhealthy-looking, washed-out and cold like the dead.

  But here, this woman feels different to him; her whiteness, rather than cold, shines with the blinding plasma of a star adrift in space. He glances incredulously back at the cook. How can such a man attract such a woman?

  Crystal makes an effort to avoid the tall man’s gaze. Naturally, she’s noticed him, even before he directed her to an empty chair. There’s just something about him, some exotic quality that practically commands attention. But her chin tilts up defiantly. She’s with Ajeno. The attractions of other men, rubbing provocatively against her feminine side, are of no consequence.

  Sexual desire, she reminds herself, is purely hormonal. Her love for Ajeno is more than that. And she understands now why she needs to be patient with him. If he tells her he must have more time to be ready for her, then she respects that. It must be a mutual decision, when they should couple.

  But feeling the tall man’s stare, she feels a hot flush rise in her cheeks.

  It’s not just the simple act of rutting that she desires. What she wants is a true union that goes beyond mating to the mysterious realms of release and ecstatic love. She allows her peripheral vision to include the tall man’s profile. It shames her to admit it, to even suggest the degradation of holiness with carnality, but to unite with another’s soul during sexual intercourse is the nearest she’s ever come to sensing God.

  Ruiz is also making an effort not to look. The woman sitting in the corner should not interest him. He tells himself this a dozen times and gradually feels better.

  In the early years as part of the Los Espejos gang, he felt more rage than any other emotion. But around about the time he made first lieutenant, his anger burned out. Since then, he’s known only coldness, an invigorating cleanliness in which to bathe. He moves through his days safely shuttered, a hard stone pitted by past collisions, spinning endlessly, relentlessly, ruthlessly through life.

  “Gracias,” he says while ringing up yet another customer. They pay, and he thoughtlessly presses their check receipt on an already-crowded spindle spike. He likely put in more force than usual because the spike abruptly snaps off its cheap metal base. “Mierda!” He tries stabbing the spike back into the base, but it falls out repeatedly. Check receipts begin to scatter, fluttering to the floor’s filth. His frustration mounts as yet more custom
ers approach the register, commanding his attention.

  He looks around for a solution when the fat man sidles up to him. “Problem, Ricky?”

  The tall man nods at the spike and base in his hands. “They will not go back together.”

  The next customer, an exhausted-looking woman moving restlessly on pained feet, shoves her bill in his face.

  Ruiz, exasperated, puts all the metal bits with their wads of paper in Ajeno’s hands. “Here, you will fix this. Yes?”

  The other happily turns it over in his hands as if it’s a new toy. “No problemo.”

  The rest of the early dinner rush goes smoothly. Within what feels like seconds, Ruiz notices the spike spindle again standing erect next to the register, check receipts stacked tidily near its base. He turns to wordlessly lift a hand in acknowledgement. Back at the grill, flipping burgers, Ajeno tries twisting his lips into a grin, but, having an entire tomato stuffed in his mouth, he is largely thwarted.

  ***

  It is much later, after Crystal’s returned home and the diner has closed, when three men tense in the back alley. The diner’s back door is opening. Out pops Ajeno into their midst. His pockets bulge with fried chicken pieces as he nibbles on a buttery corn cob.

  Marcos brings up his gun; it glints in the darkness, level with the fat man’s heart. “Again, it is you, the cook!”

  “No,” Ruiz says quickly before steadying his voice, “he works for me.”

  Pausing his chewing of the corn, Ajeno nods. “That’s right.”

  The third man steps forward. “You mean . . .” He jerks his head at Ajeno. “He’s in on this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he do—enforce, handle pickups, act as post or halcón?”

  “I fix things.” Ajeno grins, his face happily buttered from cheek to cheek.

  The two men, to either side of Ruiz, eye him with some disbelief. “You . . .,” says Marcos, “you’re a fixer?”

  “That’s right.” The other two men glance questioningly at Ruiz but get no reaction. They begin to smirk at this display of weakness. Ajeno continues, his grin turning bashful. “Ricky’s my friend. I fix things for him and he cooks for me. We help each other.” Without looking, he tosses the stripped cob into a nearby garbage can. It rattles sharply, just once, against the metal sides.