Furnace (14 page)

The Reception desk was empty and nobody appeared when he rang the bell. There were voices drifting from one of the side corridors and he wandered along a dim, windowless passage towards them.
The smell of detergent and stale laundry began to fill the air and soon he was at the half-open door of a harshly lit, low ceilinged utility room. The voices were closer now but muffled by the
churning of washing machines and dryers and the clatter of crockery being sorted and stacked. He recognised the voice of the Scottish waitress, and then Beata’s, or maybe her sister’s,
he supposed – the room seemed to be L-shaped and the speakers were hidden from sight.

There was a sudden burst of laughter, from the Scottish girl, he thought. Then, poor scarecrow! he heard Beata say, as she joined in the laughter. He stopped in the doorway and strained to hear.
He caught the word grandfather amidst a jumble of fragments and then Beata must have moved nearer, or one of the loud, throbbing machines must have finished its work, because the words were
suddenly clear. Anyway, these legs are worth watching! she insisted cheerfully. And he’ll leave a big fat tip. And Mother of God, I’m telling you, men are just beasts, and always after
the same thing everywhere.

With the students finished for the summer and with it being Friday and the middle of a New Jersey heat wave, Jesus closes the record store early. Hey, Robbie, he calls down the
aisle, bumping through the front door with a box of second-hand stock, lock up and clear the register. He slams the door shut with his hip. Coming up the aisle, his pointed silver-toed boots clack
like goats’ hooves on the tiles. He dumps the box down on the counter in front of me. Go on, baby, lock up, he says. No-one’s dumb enough to shop in this weather. He turns, squinting
back along the aisle towards the big plate glass windows at the front of the store. A bright orange poster in Jesus’s handwriting says:

Apart from that, the big panes are empty. We both stare at the back of the poster; me, because my eyes are following his; him, I don’t know why. The reverse letters are
easy to read with the sun lighting up the paper. He turns the background music off and the afternoon traffic-roar rolls in with the sun. Tomorrow, clean the windows, man, he says.

While he waits for me at the counter, I go and lock the door. All along the aisles the sunlight flashes off the racks of CD cases.

You cool about losing the hours? he says when I get back to him.

I shrug.

Let’s go in back, he says. I got somethin sweet’ll make it up to you.

In his office he throws a Ziploc bag bulging with grass onto the desk. Fresh from my brother in Jalapa, he announces, and slides it open. This,
mijo
, was raised from original Acapulco
Gold stock, he tells me. Acapulco fucking
Gold
, man – the legend. He takes a long, deep whiff before digging into it. The heat’s even more stifling in the little back office.
I’m sweating bad. I can feel it soaking my vest and shorts but Jesus in his usual black jacket and white shirt and skinny black tie looks dry and cool. He pauses from loading the papers and
smoothes both hands over his long grey hair, tightening the knot of his pony-tail.

Heat like this makes the hit more intense, he tells me. Heat like this, it thickens up the fluids that carry the high; the delivery system. He licks along the double length of the joint, then
scoots his chair back, swings his fancy boots up onto the desk and crosses them at the ankle. For a sixty year old hippy he looks pretty sharp, like a gambler in a Western, or a marshal.
That’s why it’s always best to smoke in a hot climate, he goes on, wagging his Zippo at me. He lights up, takes a long deep draw and holds it a good while before releasing. It’s
more natural, he sighs out with the smoke. That’s why God made
yerba
grow best in hot places.

Back through in the store the bell rings. We stop to listen and the door rattles hard.

Leave it, he says, but waits a few seconds, listening, before handing me the spliff and carrying on talking. You Scottish got beer. God gave you a cold wet high for a cold wet place, right?
Children of the sun got
yerba
. I got Zapotec blood,
mijo
. The papery skin around his eyes creases up and he laughs without making a sound.

I cough a bit and nod.

He takes it back from me. Man, you disgust me, he says. You’re sweating out your fucking
lips!

By the time I get out onto the street the high’s hitting like a hammer and the sun makes it worse. A truck horn blares right next to me and I realise I’m veering
off the sidewalk. A cop perched on a mountain bike stares at me from across the street but then pushes off into the traffic. I decide to take a walk down to the rowing club boat sheds. A couple of
times I had luck there the summer I arrived. Apart from twinking at the pool, it was the first beat I found.

At the top of Main Street I cut towards the woodland walk which runs from the back end of the campus all the way to the riverside. Even though it’s July a few students are still around and
using the path – the usual jocks in training, drumming up dust when they pound past, an Asian couple walking ahead of me, carrying library books. I overtake them just as we pass the married
students’ quarters and they veer off to the big concrete building in the trees. I can hear small kids playing in the woods nearby, but they’re nowhere to be seen.

At the river I sit on the lawn in front of the boat sheds, watching a family cooking at one of the communal barbeque grills. The smell of it comes over strong to me and after not wanting food
all day I’m suddenly weak and shaky from hunger. The painted notice on the boat shed says DON’T SWIM. I close my eyes for a while and try to centre myself, but the bright red letters of
the notice stay there behind the lids and I have to open them again to wipe out the image. Though the sun’s beginning to dip towards the treetops on the far bank, the heat’s still
fierce. Just a few kids are paddling at first but then a young guy about the same age as me, in shorts and a university vest, wades out and takes a stand thigh-deep in the water. There’s
something familiar about him but I can’t think what. He stares across the river, and lifts one arm to shield his eyes. The vest rides up under his raised arm and I see a big, flat pink scar
the shape of a smile. Some kind of burn. It runs from just above his left hip to the middle ribs. Then I realise where I’ve seen him before – lifeguarding at the public pool. He drops
his arm and turns to look my way. He doesn’t make any sign but I can feel my luck building. The kids in the river are noisy and splashing around but the lifeguard’s far enough away not
to be bothered by them. I get up, kick off my sandals and step in.

The water’s warm and cloudy. I stay close to the shed and watch him out the corner of my eye. He’s ready to come over to me I can tell, but now the shallows start filling with other
waders. Soon I have to back away from some old, grinning bald guy with his lapping Alsatian. All around my knees the water’s covered in spent gnats, all spread-eagled in the surface film.
Once I notice them I realise they’re plastering the whole backwater, great spreads of them like a broken skin.

Then, maybe because of the grass still working on me, or the dazzle of the sun, or all the clouds of mud being stirred by everyone, I could swear there are things in the water, living things,
Christ knows what, sliding round my legs and feet. My heart starts kicking like a horse. With all the mud stirred up it’s impossible to see what’s down there in the soup. I look up and
fix my eyes on an empty spot in mid-stream, trying to calm my brain. The river’s flat as a strip of tin. It’s so wide and slow-moving there’s no way of telling which way
it’s flowing. There’s no way of knowing if it’s going anywhere at all. I try to think about how long it would take to be carried all the way to the ocean, and then I get a thought
about that big river in India where they put their dead, but the name won’t come and all I can think is why do they do that? Then the sliding feeling comes again around my legs, like fingers,
and a cold sweat breaks all across my back. I lift each leg, one after the other, nearly falling right over, a few broken fly bodies sticking to the hairs. I know I have to get out of there. I
splash back to the bank faster than I mean to and drop onto the lawn. A fat guy lounging nearby says, sharks, buddy? but I don’t pay him any mind. I strap my sandals back on and watch the
lifeguard again. My whole body’s shaking.

Hey, Francis, some guy calls from just behind me, and the lifeguard lifts a hand to greet him. Behind him, flashing off the water, the big low sun is blinding. I don’t turn to see
who’s calling him. Francis, I say to no-one.

The next morning I call Jesus early and tell him I’m sick.

You lying son of a bitch, he says, still sleepy. What kind of sick?

Don’t know. Could be the heat.

Could be the
heat
? Listen you lazy motherfucker, he says, it’s Saturday morning. I need you there. If you’re not there behind that fucking counter when I come by at ten,
don’t bother coming back.

In the background I can hear a woman’s voice and a baby crying. He says something in Spanish away from the mouthpiece.

Okay. Well, so long then. What about the keys? I say.

Mail them through the door, you lazy fucking gringo. He puts the phone down.

I’m waiting outside the pool when it opens at seven. Already it’s hot enough for the girl in the booth to have a little electric fan going. She doesn’t smile
when she hands me my rubber bracelet.

This early, the pool’s almost empty. I watch a gang of old folks, three men and four women, lower themselves carefully in and launch out on their morning exercise of a few slow, calm
lengths. It’s restful to watch them. The water looks very blue, like the sea in a postcard, but I know that’s just how the concrete under the water is painted. There’s no sign of
Francis. Another lifeguard – a round, red-headed girl – jogs out from the changing rooms and climbs the platform. She keeps a close eye on the old swimmers, frowning thoughtfully at
them. The air stinks of chlorine. I rub in a handful of sun cream, cover my face with a fold of towel, then lie back and doze.

There’s noise all around me when I wake and I realise I must have slept for hours. The sun’s already high and even before I move a muscle I know I’ve been
burned through the sun cream. I sit up painfully, my stomach scorched. Behind me a young girl is talking. Just say yes or no, she says.

But I don’t know. I don’t know if I do or don’t.

Well yes or no? I have to fill in
something
.

I still don’t know.

If I don’t fill in anything it won’t work. There’s no box for ‘don’t know’.

Well that’s lame.

I twist onto my stomach so I can see them: two pretty little mall rats in shorts and crop-tops. One of them, a skinny blond with bobbed hair, is hunched over some teen magazine, her pen hovering
over a page. Her Latino friend, plainer and dumpier, is propped back on her elbows, frowning over her shades. They don’t notice me at all.

The blond girl sighs. When we add up the numbers it’s all going to be wrong. We might as well not have started.

It’s only one question.

But it throws the whole thing out.

I guess. The Latino struggles to sit upright. She plucks at her crop-top and then lies right back. Just put down no, she says, talking to the flat blue sky.

Can’t you decide for real, though?

Okay, put down yes, she says.

The blond winces and taps her pen against her straight white teeth. I’ll put down no, she says after a while. If you don’t know, I think that’s more accurate. She marks the
page, then stares all about her.

A whistle blows and I squirm round to sit upright again. It’s Francis. He’s on the opposite side of the pool, jabbing a finger at two boys horsing around at the pool’s edge. No
you don’t, he mouths; no-you-don’t. The boys trot away from the water, grinning.

I don’t know, the blond girl says behind me. It’s too hot to think about stuff anyway.

Add up the scores, though, her friend tells her, her voice weird and hollow-sounding suddenly, like she’s talking in a deep sleep.

The other girl groans.

If you don’t add them up there’s no point.

I watch Francis making his way slowly round the pool’s perimeter. The old folks are long gone and all the lanes are crowded with random, splashing bodies. Just about every step he takes,
pool water slops over his feet. Everything’s glittering.

A tall, black-haired woman pads towards me, dripping from her swim. She catches my eye and hitches up her soaked costume. She passes close by and I hear her flap out a towel next to the two
girls.

Having fun? she says.

Sure, the blond girl replies. It’s too hot though.

I hear one of them rummaging in a bag and then the gasp of a ring-pull being peeled back.

You still doing that questionnaire?

Uh huh. The adding up part now. It gives you a score.

Is it about boyfriends?

No. It’s about ‘Are you ruled by fate?’

So what’s the difference? she teases.

Oh mom, the Latino drones, her voice still dead as a stone.

Francis is close now, passing right in front of us. As I stand he turns and gives me a puzzled look, then a quick smile of recognition. Hey, he says quietly, and carries on walking. I dive as
well as I can, ball up underwater and watch all my silver breath pour out of me. When I surface, he’s watching. I fall away into a back-stroke.

I swim till I’m tired out, then drag myself up one of the chrome ladders and head for my towel. I’ve lost sight of Francis but the girls and the woman are still there. All three of
them are shading their eyes and peering up at the sky.

I lie back, stretching myself flat out, every muscle weak and trembling, and realise they’re watching a micro-glider circling high up above the town. Soon it wheels into the sun and I lose
it in the glare.