Three A.M. (7 page)

When we were first placed under quarantine—the few hundred thousand of us—the city took on the aspect of a prison. A massive, Byzantine prison, but captivity nonetheless. Then, when this gray veil slowly drifted down, thickening until it was a shroud over us all, the feeling of the city as a prison was gradually usurped by a general feeling of directionless wandering. When you can’t see ten feet in front of you, the road could just as well go on forever as it could stop after eleven more steps. Landmarks lost their status as points of reference. North, south, east, and west became concepts, unencumbered by attachment to a floating sun or silent moon.

The city became a series of tunnels. You were never held in one place, and you never seemed to be going anywhere specific. All any of us could do was wander around, never quite trapped but with no prospect for escape. It was as liberating as it was crushing.

I needed to sleep. I had been doing too much thinking all afternoon. Without pills and a healthy dose of whiskey, it was going to be a long time before dawn. I was even more confused about Rebecca than before, and had no idea what to make of her story—it was all over the place. She had dodged questions left and right. She changed the subject or answered each question with one of her own. She was thinking on the fly.

We had talked for an hour or so, until I had enough to start putting pieces together on my own. She had been growing more and more nervous the longer she stayed in my office. Fidgeting … looking around as if someone might be watching us there in that windowless room. When she finally got up to leave, there was relief in her eyes. I didn’t take it personally. And she didn’t mean it that way, either. I really did get the feeling that she wished me no ill will. But in a way, that only complicated things. If there was no malice aimed at me, why lie and play games?

I had opened the door for her and moved aside. She smiled and said nothing, stepping past me. I caught her by the left elbow and turned her to face me. She was startled, eyes like an animal about to break and run. I had leaned in close to her lovely face and said, very quietly, “Rebecca … I don’t think I trust you.” Then I let go of her arm and gently placed my hand on her shoulder, ushering her out the door. She stuttered and tried to respond, but I had smiled, almost wistfully, and shut the door in her face.

We were to see each other again in two days. Same time, same place. So that left me time to see what I could find out, to start cross-referencing her facts, check up on her details.

It was not quite nighttime. Just enough light bounced around off the fog, coming down from the sun somewhere high above, to render the streetlights impotent. I always loved the magic hour between light and dark. It reminded me of something from a dream: the way the lamps shine but cast no shadows, the sky blue but sunless and the land still colorful but faded. On the streets with blowers, a bit of that essence remained.

The orbs winked at me from alleys and side streets bisecting Eighth Ave. Little wisps of haze reached out toward me, as if for me, from these darkened roads, and then twirled about themselves, dancing back into the mist or gently dispersing into nothing. I think if I had my choice and I could make the fog go away, the first thing I would want to see would be twilight with just a few stars piercing the blue gray canopy. I wanted to watch night creep over the dome of sky and wrap around us all, and then, in the morning, the sun would rise and I would never again be angry to have it on my shoulders or in my eyes.

I had stopped walking and stood, lost in thought, in the middle of the street. It must have been true night above by now—I cast a shadow in the pale light of the streetlamps, and the soft glow of the few open stores and restaurants spilled out onto the sidewalks before them.

The door to Carol’s apartment was close by. I knew she’d let me in. Earlier in the afternoon, I had thought it was what I wanted. What I needed. But as I lingered there in the twilight haze, I couldn’t bring myself to take those last few steps. To ring the bell, to make the small talk and drink the wine and see her bright green eyes on me, free of judgment but full of pity.

It must have been Rebecca that drove me the other way down the street. I knew why I had sought Carol—knew I would have pretended she were someone else. It wouldn’t help anything. Just make things more complex. I lit a smoke and made my way quickly toward Salk’s pharmacy and my bottle of fixes.

*   *   *

Salk was, by all accounts, an ugly man. He was fifty, maybe fifty-five, and had aged with the grace of a bulldozer. His remaining hair was more yellow than gray or white. His skin greasy and sallow—jaundiced. The pores of his nose massive. Just massive. I’d never seen anything like them. If he lived another twenty years, he’d be able to smuggle pills in those things.

He said he was a doctor once. A pediatrician. He was a nice guy in a pathetic, beat-down kind of way. In our exchanges, no matter how brief or protracted, all he tended to do was quietly complain. It wasn’t whining. It was more of a lament. He lamented the state of things and took what the world had come to very personally. It was leveled at him, he seemed convinced. He wouldn’t say “I wish we could still get tomatoes” or “I miss tomatoes” or anything like that. Instead he would sigh and whisper, shaking his head, “Tomatoes are gone forever.”

A depressed, depressing guy. But I wasn’t exactly Mr. Shot-in-the-Arm, so usually I was polite but laconic with him. I needed booze, smokes, and pills. And maybe some canned food so I wouldn’t have to leave the house for a couple days.

I stubbed out my cigarette on the bricks in front of his store. Every time I passed under the faded sign above the boarded-up window, I’d smile sardonically. In tall block letters on a cracked white display that was once illuminated was the word
DRUGS
. The vents in the alcove were old and weak, wheezing at the offending air.

I blinked and rubbed at my eyes to adjust to the interior light. A few fluorescent tubes shone above, casting a cold pall across the half-empty shelves of the dilapidated place. An old woman shuffled down one of the aisles, reading the labels on various bottles. The place was empty except for her.

I walked to the far wall and grabbed two fifths of scotch and a handle of vodka. Then I stepped in front of the big, hazy sheet of glass that separated Salk from the rest of us. He sat with his back to me on a strangely ornate wooden chair. It was fine wood—maybe oak—and intricately carved with flowery protrusions along the armrests and back. It was a singularly peculiar sight: this middle-aged man in a fancy chair surrounded by rusted metal shelves stacked with bottles of pills.

I knocked gently on the glass. He straightened up, then set down a book and rose, not yet having turned or looked back at me. Salk stretched his fleshy neck and slowly trudged toward the glass, eyes cast downward. When finally he lifted them and recognized me, both warmth and pity played across his repellent face.

“Thomas. Hello.”

“Hey, Salk. How’ve you been?”

“Nothing has changed. Nothing changes.”

“Yeah … not even my attempts at friendly banter, right?”

He smiled and inclined his head, eyes closed. “I always appreciate your asking, just the same. And how are things with you?”

“Uh…” I legitimately thought for a moment. “Fine, I suppose. I mean I’m still here … still alive and in one piece. That’s about as good as it gets.”

He stood behind the thick glass etched with spiderweb cracks and said nothing for a moment. “Still having trouble sleeping?”

“Oh, only every night.”

“That’s too bad. Well, I’m sure we can help. Let’s just…” He subtly pointed to the elderly lady, who seemed to be through with her searching. I nodded and stepped aside as she shuffled up to the glass and held aloft one item for Salk to price. A large, brightly colored candle.
Well, that’s pleasant,
I thought to myself. As soon as the thought was fully formed in my head, I was struck by my own cynicism. It’s the little things in life, right? All the minute pleasant details that add up to a nice day or all the individual frustrations or contentions that lead to a life poorly lived—the sum of those equals the whole. So fuck me, not her.

I ambled around the store, feigning purpose. All I really wanted at this point was to get home and get not-sober fast. Salk’s canned goods section got as much action from me as any grocery store. I preferred dumping cans into pots and eating out of the latter with a spoon to multi-step, multi-ingredient preparation anyway.
Fresh
had become a relative term.

I picked up a rickety metal basket from a small table by the door, dropped in the bottles of booze and grabbed a few cans of this, a few of that. Whatever looked, from the label, like it had the most ingredients in it. To balance things out in the old digestive system. I stuffed as many foodstuffs as I could in the basket. Then I grabbed a few small candles. They smelled like apples. I grabbed a carton of cigarettes too.

The old woman was gone, so Salk and I got down to business. I heard several bolts click and rattle, and then he emerged from a narrow door beside the window. Salk surveyed the contents of my basket briefly, and then said, “Let’s call it thirty dollars.”

“Hey, I appreciate it, but the liquor alone must—”

“Thomas,” he interrupted gently, “everything here is subsidized by the government. I’m a licensed pharmacist—a civic employee, after all. No one has checked my inventory in years.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, eyes shut tight as if fighting a tension headache. “And frankly, hardly anyone comes in anymore anyway. I’ve grown to not much mind it, though. I take what I want and sell what I can for however much I feel is fair.” He looked up at me. “And then, of course, there’s…”

“Yeah.” I handed him thirty dollars in rumpled bills and accepted a paper bag he handed me. I continued speaking while packing my cans, bottles, smokes, and the candles. “I need more. More than last time.”

*   *   *

The alley behind Salk’s pharmacy had no orbs and no streetlights pierced the swirling fog here. The air was gray black, and anything more than three feet from your face impossible to see. A very good place to do this kind of thing. Salk was convinced that the ancient camera in one corner of his store still worked and that the government knew who had prescriptions and who did not.

I was sure this was batshit, but there was no reason to ever press the issue. I stood leaning against the wet bricks next to the pharmacy’s back door and waited for him to emerge. After a minute or so, the door clicked open and pale yellow light spilled into the void. He leaned out, saw me, and then stepped into the alley and sealed the door behind him. I heard the rattle of a pill bottle in the darkness. His hand found my arm, and then he pressed the bottle into my open palm.

“It’s quite full.”

“Thanks.”

“You know, Thomas, I used to feel like I really helped people. Really … really connected…” He sighed and looked away.

“You help me.”

Salk laughed under his breath, a bitter little sound. “I do what I can. I like the sense of routine. What else is there?”

Not knowing how to respond, I dug in my pocket for a couple of bills. “This is a fifty and a twenty.”

“That will be fine, Thomas. I thank you,” he said with an almost noble, resigned air as he backed away. I heard the door click open, and then yellow light again softened the darkness. Salk said nothing more and did not pause or look back as he shut the door behind him and left me standing in the blackness of the alley, clutching a paper sack full of liquor and canned food in one hand and a bottle of pills in the other.

*   *   *

I sat staring at the tape player. Chopin was poised and ready to fill the room and reduce me to a blubbering pile. I was drunk, but not very. I looked up and thought to rise and eat something, to bathe—anything to keep me from pressing play and unleashing the music on myself. Unconsciously, my eyes locked on to a black smudge on the wall across from my threadbare couch. I sat staring at this little patch of filth and hummed to myself off-key.

The ash from my cigarette snapped me from a trance as it fell onto my fingers. The smoke had burned itself out. I shook my hand, startled, and then threw the wasted butt into the overflowing ashtray. I rose and yanked the tape player’s plug from the wall, resolved not to listen to music tonight. I paced around the small room, needing something to do.

Nothing added up about what Rebecca had told me. I considered backing out of the whole thing. Eddie was a poor, honest sap—if I could figure out who was ripping him off, it’d pay the bills and keep me drunk for a couple of months and I was sure to find some desperate, spurned wife or a debtor to shake down or something. I’d lived by my instincts all my life. More so after the fog settled in. Most everyone looks out for themselves—it’s depressing, it’s bitter, it’s true. There were still a few churches out there and some support groups and places where people could gather and actually talk to one another, but none of it was right for me. I’d never been able to trust people; and it was even harder now. I walked over to the window and stood mumbling to myself, half out loud, at times silently. Nothing felt right, and really, the only reason I’d agreed to meet with Becca a third time was curiosity. And a little sense of excitement, I guess. And hey, I could always run off down some gray street and never look back when the walls started closing in.

She had told me more about him. Fallon. Told me lots of non-intimate details. He sounded like an asshole to me. He sounded like a pushover—worked in a big office of the power company. A drone. I had already come to hate this man because she loved him. Because he had something beautiful. But regardless of that and regardless of her description, office drones don’t end up framed for murder. They shopped at the grocery stores on big, blown-out avenues and spent money at bars in one of the few restaurants uptown. There was more to him. And I was going to find out about it.

Then there was Samuel Ayers.… There was at least one advantage to the ever-centralizing, growing bureaucracy of this city: the bureaucrats who answered the phones were experts at inadvertently giving away information. If you wanted to find someone you called the city. Every call for everything started at the same place: City Central. One of the thousand glassy-eyed, soulless pen pushers at Central took your call. You asked for an individual, a department, a business—anything. More often than not, that’s where your search ended. They hardly ever gave you the info you needed; they gave a curt take on
fuck you very much,
and you’re left holding a dead phone to your ear. But if you were looking for a government employee, things were a bit easier.