The Old Reactor (16 page)

Another said, “There’s going to be a lot of dead.”

Moldenke ran to the door and out onto the sidewalk. Over the roofs of other rooming houses he could see the Heeney in full flame, the main beam beginning to sag, promising to soon collapse. White smoke billowed into the cold sky. People ran this way and that. Screams could be faintly heard. A free woman rushing by stopped to catch her breath long enough to say, “A girl set her father on fire. He ran burning through the hallway, down the stairs, spread flames everywhere. It’s terrible.”

To Moldenke it could be none other than Salmonella and Udo. “I think I know them,” Moldenke said. “His daughter must have escaped from the Home. It’s a shame there’s no one to put the fire out.”

“Ah,” the woman said, “where would they get the water, anyway? Everything’s frozen.” She buttoned her collar and headed north into the wind.

Moldenke didn’t see that anything would be gained by going to watch the Heeney burn. There were men inside the Tunney waiting for a room, and a body to be taken care of. Sorrel would be there soon. He hoped she would dawdle awhile and watch the fire.

First, he would have the men register, then check their pass cards and give them room keys. He stood behind the Dutch door. “All right. There are four of you. Let me see those cards and you can have a room.” The men showed him their cards.

“You the new concierge? Used to be an old woman.”

“She went back to Bunkerville. I’m in charge now. I should tell you right away, there’s no toileting facilities here and the rooms can be as cold and as hot as hell.”

One of the men could see the concierge’s toilet from where he stood. “What’s that in there?”

“It belonged to the old woman. Her husband installed it. It doesn’t work anymore.”

“You better not be lying, you dipshit.”

“We’ll all be using the public one down the street. Here are your keys. You can go up to your rooms. Be thankful you weren’t burned alive.”

The men climbed the stairs, grumbling and cursing. When Moldenke heard the fourth door close, feeling sure the men had all gone into their rooms, he went to the concierge’s bedroom to get her and stood at the foot of the bed, planning to lift her feet, swing her around, and ease her down to the floor. That accomplished, he wondered what the simplest way to get her to the basement would be. The best, he thought, was to drag her. As long as no one saw him doing it, there would be no problem. For padding he strapped a small pillow to her head with one of her husband’s neck ties. He didn’t want it banging against the stairs.

He dragged her out of the apartment, past the Dutch door, and toward the stairs to the basement. All seemed to be going as planned, until the pillow slid off and her head
thunked
hard the last few steps. He left her in the domed brick room after arranging her stiffened arms as close to repose on the belly as he could accomplish. She looked a bit serene and saintly, Moldenke thought, particularly in the dim light.

When he huffed back up the stairs, there Sorrel stood at the Dutch door, weeping into a handkerchief. “They were lying out on the sidewalk, the ones who were burned. It was an awful thing to see. I feel faint.”

“You should lie down. Here, come into my apartment. Lie down on the bed.”

Moldenke placed her suitcase in the bedroom closet and offered to put Big Ernie somewhere, but she said, “No, I want him,” as she fell onto the bed with the ashes clutched to her breast.

“You nap here for a while. I’ll get your room ready. Bottom floor or top floor?”

“I don’t really care. I’m exhausted. I hurt from head to toe.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sick.”

Moldenke sat on the edge of the bed and thought for a moment. He glanced down to see where sunlight struck the floor, telling him it was about mid-afternoon. Perhaps Sorrel would sleep here the entire night. It would be a thing to hope for. He wouldn’t get her room ready at all. He would sleep beside her tonight in the concierge’s bed. Readying a room could wait.

He edged closer to her so that his thigh lightly touched hers. He was going to say, “Let me rub your back. It might relax you,” when he realized she was already asleep.

He didn’t want to rub her back now and take the chance of waking her, so he went into the bathroom to see if perhaps the pipes had thawed. A melting had begun, but by no means were the pipes flowing.

He returned to the bed and listened to Sorrel’s raspy, labored breathing. He didn’t want to think she was dying and thought of other things. There might be a radio in the apartment, one that would dial in a weather report. He searched every likely spot and eventually found an old portable in the drawer of a dresser, dusty and unused, the batteries weak. He turned it on nevertheless, and though the signal was intermittent he heard a Bunkerville news roundup reporting that near there a suspicious red cloud dumped an extra-heavy dose of radio powder on the Black Hole Motel, occupied by fifteen people. The motel has since been deserted. Then came a bulletin from Altobello: Radio poisoning warning issued for Old Reactor pond.

The batteries faltered and Moldenke could no longer make sense of the signal. He put the radio back where he’d found it.

The mail arrived. He could hear the postal carrier’s heavy footfalls and a tapping on the Dutch door. He waited until the carrier was gone before checking the mail. He didn’t want any further questions about why he was running the place.

There was a letter from Ozzie:

Near dusk, after waking from a nap beside Sorrel, Moldenke heard a rapping on the Dutch door. As concierge, it was his duty to receive would-be tenants, especially Heeney survivors. This could be one of them.

The rapper, however, was Salmonella, with singed hair and a scorched blouse. “I want a room.” Her canvas bag, too, was scorched.

“Did you set the fire?”

“He was no good. He was trash. So I burned him.”

“If you want a room, show me your pass card. I’ll give you a key. But here’s a warning, there are men up there whose friends perished in the fire. They won’t excuse what you did.”

“I don’t care. I’m freeborn. I’m not afraid of anything. Why are you in charge here?”

“Things happen. The concierge was called back to Bunkerville. I’m watching out for the Tunney while she’s gone. We don’t have facilities, so you’ll have to use public ones.”

“Yeah, I know—same as the Heeney.”

“A lot of free people died.”

“He ran all around till he fell down the stairs and set the carpet on fire. I didn’t know he was going to do that. Please let me stay in your room. I’m tired. I won’t have trouble sleeping on the floor.”

“You
escaped
from the Home, then.”

“It’s easy. The Sisters drink bitters and get sleepy. I took a can of turpentine from the tool shed at the Home and went to look for Daddy at the Heeney. He was drunk with bitters and half asleep on a torn-up old mattress with a lit Julep in his mouth. I sloshed him with turpentine and the Julep caught him on fire.”

“That explains it,” Moldenke said.

“I hated him so much. Now I won’t ever know who my mother was.”

He handed Salmonella a key. “The room hasn’t been cleaned. Things have been so busy. I’ll be sleeping down here.”

“I don’t care. I could sleep in a rat’s nest.”

“Keep an eye out for those men up there. They may want to hurt you.”

“Here.” Salmonella reached into her bag for an apple, which she handed to Moldenke. “They grow on a tree at the Home.” She began her ascent of the stairs and stopped. From that vantage, she saw the apartment bathroom and the commode.

“It’s not for tenant use,” Moldenke said.

Passing the fingers of one hand through her singed hair, Salmonella continued to the second floor.

Moldenke could now return to Sorrel and hope there would be no more check-ins for a while. He thought she might be a little peckish when she awoke and he went into the apartment kitchen to see what might be there to eat and drink. He had never seen the concierge at Saposcat’s and concluded she must have eaten in.

The kitchen was small, but there was a coal-fired brazier for cooking, pots and pans, and a fresh-box that opened to the outside cold. In the box were cans of meat, meal mix, salted mud fish, a quart of green soda, and on a shelf above the fresh-box, a bottle of bitters. There wouldn’t be any real need to go to Saposcat’s for dinner. He and Sorrel could stay in, have some meat, a couple of mud fish, soda, an apple, possibly a glass or two of bitters, then get some needed rest.

Things were falling into place for Moldenke, at least for the moment. The concierge in the basement shelter remained something to think about now and then. If the weather turned hot, there could be an urgency to take care of her in some way, either bury her or move her elsewhere.

He sat on the edge of the bed. Sorrel was still asleep, still clinging to Big Ernie’s ashes, some of which had spilled from the badly sealed container on to the bed sheets. He leaned close to the pillow, planning to give her a little kiss on the cheek, a brotherly kiss, nothing to frighten her. But when his puckered lips neared her flesh, he felt heat. He touched her forehead. She was feverish. He shook her shoulder gently. “Sorrel? You’re hot as a stove. You should be drinking something. We have green soda.”

She lifted her head, leaving strands of hair on the pillow, then turned to the side and vomited foamy, rosy bile over the edge of the bed.

Moldenke handed her the corner of the quilt to wipe her mouth.

“Sorry, Moldenke. I couldn’t help it. I’m
so
sick.”

“It’s probably a bug. The weather’s been cold.”

“It’s radio poisoning. I bathed in that pond so many times. What about you, Moldenke?”

“Only that once and not for long.”

“Let me sleep here. It hurts to move.”

“Would you like anything to eat or drink? I have a kitchen. There’s meat, there’s green soda. Even bitters if you want something stiff.”

Sorrel didn’t answer. Her head sank back into the pillow and she was asleep in moments.

Moldenke was in a quandary. If Sorrel was suffering radio poisoning, there was nothing he could do other than let her sleep and make her as comfortable as possible. He tucked the blanket around her and put a second pillow under her head.

As Sorrel slept, Moldenke ate a couple of mud fish along with a few gulps of bitters and settled on the idea of doing something about the concierge. It was nearly dark outside, so what little light came into the basement windows would soon be gone altogether. He had three or four Juleps left and a few matches. He searched the apartment, hoping to find a candle. There was a box of waxed-paper matches near the pellet stove, but no candles that he could find.

Now the bitters were making him dizzy. He descended the basement stairs carefully, his ankle throbbing, holding to the rail with one hand and trying to keep a match burning with the other. The matches cast light in a small circle. Anything a few feet away lay in darkness. He almost stepped on a slug before crushing a fat, brown basement cricket underfoot. When the flame reached his finger, he would stop, blow out the stub, and light another. Once down the stairs, the footing was paved with rounded stones that were damp, uneven and with a slippery skin of mold. He had to take each step with the skill of a mountain goat. A sprained or broken ankle could lay him up for weeks or months.

On reaching the shelter area, he had two matches left, which lighted his way to the body. He stood beside it, regretting he’d come all this way without a thought-through plan for disposing of it in a sanitary way. Several options occurred to him. One, to leave her where she was, do nothing, and hope she would shrivel and dry, though in such a damp environment that was unlikely. She was sure to mold, perhaps even liquefy after a while. In the meantime, there would be cadaverous odors wafting up. The roomers would complain.

The other possibility, dragging her up the stairs and out of the building and who knew how far, would be quite strenuous. He wasn’t feeling all that well, and if he were to exhaust himself, he could easily lapse into something far more serious. He made the decision to leave her there. If he detected any odor, the plan would be reconsidered. Until then, it was best to go back to his duties as concierge, to taking care of Sorrel, and to dealing with whatever trouble Salmonella might bring.

He sat in a chair near the bed and kept an eye on Sorrel. She shivered, moving her head from side to side in an agitated delirium. Her face, flush with radio poison, looked radiant and beautiful to Moldenke at that moment. He added pellets to the stove at about midnight, then took off his uniform and lay next to her, thinking that his warmth, however slight, would provide her some comfort.

“Sorrel, can you hear me? Can you understand what I’m saying?” She seemed not to hear him and didn’t respond. Strands of her hair had come off and were strewn on the pillow. He saw that her eyes were open. “Can you see me?”

There was again no response of any kind, which convinced Moldenke that if he was ever to mate with Sorrel, this would be the best opportunity. He first removed his socks and underdrawers in a careful way, hoping not to disturb her. He brushed her hair from the pillow with the side of his hand and kissed her lightly on a fevered cheek. Next he unbuttoned her blouse and felt her breasts with the tips of his fingers, encircling the nipples with a gentle sweep. She showed no signs of displeasure or annoyance, so he went further and removed the rest of her clothing. This was not without difficulty. Having to raise much of the weight of her body to slide her skirt and underdrawers off, the muscles in his arms began to twitch and spasm and pain him. He was exhausted when the task was over and lay back to recover his breath. Now the two lay naked together under the cover, dusted with Big Ernie’s ashes, she shaking with chills, he fondling himself in preparation for mounting her.