The Parallel Apartments (24 page)

“Justine. Phone.”

It was Fanny. She'd had a dream where she'd been working at the store and Doc Severinsen came in.

“I often dream about men of entertainment,” Fanny told Justine over the phone, her breathing rapid and shallow, as if she were having an asthma attack in the Arctic. “The big names, you know, Lee Marvin, Jerry Lewis, John Denver, Charlie Pride. Last night it was Doc. He comes into the drugstore to drop off eight rolls of film to be developed. I say, ‘Hi, Doc,' he says ‘Hi,' and tells me he wants duplicates and another roll of film. So I set him up. He smiles at me, a handsome old smile, but then his eyes get big and they turn into gumballs, one yellow and one blue, and somehow in my dream I knew he could read my mind.”

Fanny paused. Justine heard her drinking something, a cartoonlike
glgglg,
rising in pitch as whatever she was drinking drained out of its decanter.

“Then he reaches up with a weird long finger and pushes in his yellow gumball eye like a doorbell, and the blue gumball eye explodes. Me, I wake up on the floor, the night table tipped over, cigarette butts and pills and cough syrup and flashlight batteries and Jolts everywhere, and I guess somehow falling off the bed I break off my Swee'Pea nightlight and get little shards of night-lightbulb stuck in my ass.”

“Oh my god. Are you okay?”

“Fine,” said Fanny, calming down. “So guess what?”

“What?”

“I ain't opening the shop. Closed today.”

“Really?” said Justine.

“A day off. Unpaid, sorry.”

“What about Mr. Krupp? He picks up his insulin today.”

“Al Krupp can kiss my peppered ass, then drive himself over to People's Pharmacy. But look. I want you to run over there and put a sign on the door that says we're closed and why.”

“Like,
CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS
or something?”

“No, like
CLOSED SO DOC SEVERINSEN CAN'T COME IN TO READ THE PHARMACIST'S MIND
.”

“Serious?”

“Know how to spell ‘Severinsen'?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, so run down there and put up that sign.”

Justine lay back down, a little disappointed she wasn't going in to work. She needed to save money in order to take Dot and Lou to Wendy's or wherever, or just to have it if they needed it. Justine also needed money for the costlier varieties of cold-pressed watercolor paper, the preferred support of the collagist.

The phone rang again. Fanny had a habit of changing her mind, so Justine answered.

“Hello?”

“Yes, hello,” said a male voice, haughty but also base, a drill sergeant playing Henry Higgins. “Please connect me to Louis Borger.”

“Lou? I'm pretty sure he's sleeping right now. Can I take a message?”

“This is a time-sensitive matter.”

“Can I ask who's calling?”

“Go wake him up and place a telephone receiver in his hand. Now.”

Justine put on a nightgown and hurried downstairs. Dot was on her divan, Dartmouth alongside her. Justine paused, as she always did when she went through the living room, to make sure Dot was all right. That she was alive. Justine stared until she saw her chest rise and fall. It seemed to take longer this time, and the rise was not as high. Justine went into the kitchen and tapped on the door by the pantry that led to the garage.

“Lou?”

“Come on in.”

His voice was even and strong, not the voice of a person she'd just woken up. Justine opened the door. Lou was sitting on his cot, dressed in one of his two changes of clothes. His blankets were folded neatly and stacked on his pillow. Several full two-liter Coke bottles and a number of foot-high towers of Reader's Digest Condensed Books formed a modest rampart at the foot of his cot.

“Hi, Lou. Up, huh?”

“Yeah. Couldn't sleep.”

“There's a guy on the phone for you. He says it's urgent.”

“Thanks, darling.”

“It's Sherpa, right? Is today the big treatment day?”

“I imagine it is the big appointment before the big treatment day. When he demonstrates the procedure and tells us what to expect.”

Lou went into the kitchen and picked up the extension.

“Hello?” said Lou.

Justine opened the pantry and lurked there, reviewing the fare, while Lou said, “Yes, Sherpa,” into the phone a few times, then hung up. He immediately picked up the phone again and dialed.

“Yeah, I need a cab going way south, to Slaughter Lane.”

“Lou, I can take you,” said Justine. “I have the day off. I have a friend's car. I just hafta stop at the store for a minute to put up a sign.”

“That's sweet, but Charlotte's got the car today, so we're better off taking a cab. We'll be there awhile this time.”

Justine shook a Pop-Tart at Lou.

“Hang up that telephone this instant because I am driving you to Sherpa's.”

Lou hung up the phone.

“All right then,” he said. “Let's go get ole Dotty bundled up.”

Justine always waited in the car, but this morning she opened her door, looked down at the ground to make sure she wouldn't squash her tarantula, and stepped out.

“I'm coming in, too.”

Lou carried Dot the whole way.

The house itself was a small, low, ordinary stuccoed ranch. A satellite dish beetled from an eave. An orange cat, balanced at the peak of the roof, watched them.

A man in his fifties came to the door. He was shirtless, lean, and weathered. He wore loose olive-green pants held up with dark red suspenders. The toe leather of his black lace-up boots was worn away, exposing battered and rusty steel toes. His forearms were tanned, broad, hairy; his chest tense, ribs asymmetrical, belly randomly scarred. He was not muscular, but clearly mule-strong. His hands were thick, and gray with calluses. His face, gullied with deep wrinkles, was flattened like a journeyman fighter's. His head was freshly shaved, but faintly visible stubble betrayed a hairline that crossed low on his forehead. His eyes glimmered with a mineral, transparent slate, like in photographs of Confederate soldiers. Under one arm he held an intelligent-looking, obviously frightened adolescent raccoon. The Sherpa held out his free hand, palm up. Lou's arms were full of Dot, who appeared to be asleep.

“Justine, baby,” said Lou, “go in my coat pocket, this one here, and get out the money and the little photography things in there, would you? And give them to Sherpa? Sherpa, this is Justine, can she come in, too?”

Sherpa stared at Justine, saying nothing. In Lou's pocket, warm, humid, the lining torn, Justine found a folded stack of cash an inch thick, the outer note a twenty, and three black plastic 35 mm canisters with gray caps. She placed everything in the lifeless arroyo of Sherpa's hand. He turned and went inside. Lou and Dot followed. Justine did the same, shutting the door behind her. For a moment, all was black.

“Hurry,” came the soft-hard voice of Sherpa from somewhere deep in the house. “Live or die?”

“Live, Sherpa,” said Lou and Dot.

“What!” screamed Sherpa.

“Live, Sherp—”

“Shut the fuck up.” A kettle began to whistle somewhere.

A yellow light resolved in the distance. Justine could make out the shape of Lou holding Dot, a pietà in silhouette.

Then, a paling squeak. The raccoon?

A sudden bright light blinded Justine. She blinked and wiped her eyes with the tail of her T-shirt, bending over so as not to expose her belly and bra.

The house was a single large room with a low drop ceiling of acoustic tiles and a plain white linoleum floor waxed to a hospital shine. The room was bare except for a large, empty kennel, and a small gas stove, kettle screaming on one burner. Sherpa lifted the lid, quieting the kettle for a moment, poured
the contents of Lou's three canisters into the water, then replaced the lid. He turned around, and as if he had just realized a movie camera was filming him, exclaimed, “Well, hello.”

“Hello, Sh—”

“Today I take you downstairs. You, pull on that.”

With his elbow Sherpa pointed first to Justine and then to the baseboard by the stove, where a brass handle was visible. Justine pulled up the trapdoor, revealing wooden stairs that led to a cellar. Sherpa went first, then Lou and Dot, then Justine. The trapdoor fell shut behind her.

The cellar, also one room, was triangular, almost as large as the entire house above. The space seemed old, geologically so, like a cavern. The concrete walls and floor were painted a matte black. Against one wall stood an antique glass-fronted gun case with four identical rifles, a small black safe, a Styrofoam cooler, and a toilet with a floral, cushioned toilet seat, facing a large TV set. Against another wall was a stainless-steel counter, on which sat dozens of corked brown-glass bottles, a pack of balloons, and a stack of index cards. Against the third wall was a ratty blue couch.

“Sit on that,” said Sherpa.

Lou put Dot down in the middle of the couch, and he and Justine sat on either side of her.

In the center of the room stood an enormous green-felted mahogany billiard table. At one end of the table, next to a coil of transparent plastic tubing, sat an odd device that looked to be contrived of the parts of a sewing machine and powered by a hand-cranked direct current generator of the sort used by Marxist rebels to set off dynamite or electrocute bourgeoisie. At the other end of the table lay an enameled-steel tray deep enough to hide its contents. Something about the way the felt deformed beneath the tray suggested it was not empty. The center of the table was barren, stained. Sherpa walked to the table and let the raccoon off there.

Sherpa went to the stainless-steel counter, uncorked a bottle, and tapped several small blue capsules into the palm of his hand. He walked directly over to Dot.

“
Aah
,” said Sherpa. “
Ah
. Say
aaah
.”

Dot opened her mouth, and Sherpa dropped the capsules in one at a time. He shut her mouth and held it closed with one hand, and rubbed her throat with the other.

Justine stood up.

“What did you just give her?”

Sherpa ignored her. He gave Lou two pills, which he also swallowed dry.

“What is that shit?”

“Justine,” Lou said, cringing, sotto voce. “Please. It's all right.”

“Girl,” said Sherpa, “don't you take vitamins?”

“Don't call me girl,” said Justine, grabbing Dot's hand and pulling. “Dot, get up. Time to go. C'mon, Lou, gimme a hand.”

“No,” said Dot, pulling her hand away. The strength and speed of her recoil startled Justine.

“Justine, please,” said Lou, putting his arms around Dot. “We've been working on this an awful long time. Please.”

“No way, this guy's a total fruit sandwich. C'mon.”

“Justine, stop it,” said Dot, her voice clogging up, maybe from the effects of the pills. “Just settle yourself. This is just a dress rehearsal. The show is soon, maybe tomorrow.”

Justine looked at the raccoon, Sherpa, the staircase. Upstairs the kettle continued to scream. Justine sat down.

Sherpa came over to Justine, rattling blue capsules in one hand, like dice.

“Okiedoke. Aah.”

“I'm not taking those.”

“Oh?” said Sherpa. “Sure?”

“No way.”

“Justine,” Lou said. “Sherpa has cured more than a hundred patients. We trust him.”

“That'll be just fine, then,” he said. “Okay, everybody out.”

From Lou and Dot simultaneously, “Huh?” Lou's eyelids were beginning to droop and his eyes to cross.

“Don't pretend you don't know the rules. Adios, kids.”

“No, please, Sherpa, wait,” said Lou, panic elbowing its way through his otherwise-drugged-neutral body. “Justine, darling, take them, they're purifiers, it's all right. Go ahead now.”

“Too late, show's over,” said Sherpa, walking over to the table and scooping up the raccoon. “Out, y'all.”

The couch began to thump; once, twice, a third time. It was Lou, crying in single, compressed, quiet sobs.

“Kill the lights when you leave. Oh, turn off the fire under the pot upstairs on your way out, wouldja?”

“Please,” said Dot, with what must have been energy borrowed from the gods. “Sherpa. Oh. Justine. Come on, now.”

Justine had never seen Dot supplicate, never seen her beg, never seen her extorted. Justine imagined this was how it had been when under the sick thumb of her old pimp, Kelly Miller.

“Time for all y'all to fuck off now.”

Justine kept quiet. She didn't stand up. Lou quit sobbing. Dot seemed to hold her breath. Presently, Sherpa put the raccoon back down on the billiards table. He walked over to his Styrofoam cooler and pulled out a can of Sprite. He approached Justine.