Untouchable (22 page)

The work order said that the father would be present at the job site. The father of the girl the coroner’s people had taken from the room.

The moonman suit crinkled as Darby climbed the stairs. He realized too late that he shouldn’t have suited up, that Bob never suited up until after he’d talked to whoever was waiting when they arrived.

He stopped a few stairs below the man. He waited for the man to lift his head, to say something. Waited for the man to do one of the things Darby had seen Bob absorb at other job sites. Waited for the man to scream or wail, to spit curses, to throw a punch. The man did nothing. Darby could see the pale, hairless skin between the bottom of the man’s pant cuffs and the tops of his dress socks, could smell the last, faint traces of his morning aftershave, clean and sweet. Roistler shifted impatiently down on the bottom step. Darby let another full minute pass before he finally spoke, before he used Bob’s voice, Bob’s words in the quiet stairwell.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said.

The man didn’t move. Darby didn’t know if maybe he didn’t speak English. The work order didn’t say who had placed the call, only that the father would still be at the site. He wasn’t sure what he would do if the man couldn’t understand him.

The man lifted his head. He had soft, round features, but his skin was strained tight. He looked at Darby, looked at the moonman suit. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen.

“What is your name?” he said. Perfect English. The son of immigrants. The son of the son of immigrants. “My name is Peter. This was my apartment, my family’s apartment.”

Darby knew that an answer was necessary, that an answer was required to pass, to start the job. He cleared his throat. The speck was still there.

“My name is Bob,” Darby said. “My name is Bob Lewis.”

Peter looked at Darby’s gloves, the paper mask hanging around his neck. “I thought I could take care of this, but I could not,” he said.

Darby nodded like he had seen Bob nod many times before, and he wondered if Bob felt the same thing he felt as he nodded, that this movement kept things away, this man and his grief, the nodding discouraged anything from attaching, anything from sticking.

Peter shifted to the side of the step, letting Darby pass into the open doorway.

“Thank you, Mr. Lewis,” Peter said. “I thought I could do this, but I cannot.”

Roistler knelt on the floor, scrubbing the bathtub. Darby stood beside him, spraying the walls, wiping red handprints from the tile. The handprints were half the size of Darby’s hands. He scrubbed the sink, the toilet, went to work on the floor. The floor tile was red, nearly the same color as the fluid. He sprayed hydrogen chloride across suspicious areas, waited to see if it bubbled, indicating fluid rather than water spilled from the tub.

They’d left Peter down at a table in the restaurant with the paperwork. Darby had marked the time, told Peter the hourly rate, how long he estimated the job would take. Peter watched Darby intently as he explained all of this, nodded at the end, sat down with the forms.

Darby crossed from the bathroom into the girl’s bedroom. There were stipples of fluid on the cream carpeting. He followed the trail over to the double bed. He lifted the comforter, the sheets, checked for more fluid. Followed the trail to a sliding glass door on the other side of the room. There was a small covered landing outside, crammed with boxes and potted plants and a pair of bicycles. Another enclosed stairwell lead down from the landing, attached to the back of the building. There was a red handprint on the wall beside the glass doors. Darby sprayed the print, let the fluid run into a dustpan.

She had come back in here after she’d done it. He knew this, it was clear to him. She’d filled the tub and slipped into the hot water and lifted whatever she’d used, a razor blade stolen from a drug store, stolen from the other bathroom in the apartment, lifted it up to the overhead light, the metal shining, and then she’d slid the blade down each forearm, wrist to elbow. Shocked by the pain, by how much it hurt, then shocked by the fluid, so much so soon. She’d quickly become dizzy with it, submerging her arms to dull the feeling, the steaming bathwater swirling pink.

He knew all of this, standing at the glass door, the red handprint sliding down the wall into his dustpan. He tried not to think of it, but he knew all of this, it was so clear to him.

She’d gotten out of the tub because she was going to be sick. She was overcome, suddenly nauseous, and the idea of being sick in the tub in addition to what she had already done shamed her to stand. She braced herself with a hand on the wall, stepped uneasily out onto the tile to throw up in the toilet. She saw the bathroom then, the mirror over the sink reflecting the room wet with bathwater and lost fluid. The sight chased her into the bedroom, stepping carefully, still dizzy, her skin prickling, strangely electric in the open air.

She stood at the sliding glass door, dripping onto the carpet, a hand on the wall to steady herself. She looked out onto the parking lot below, the blue and green dumpsters, the backs of the brick buildings that faced the street beyond. The familiar view. Everything clear and crisp, everything strange and new. The wild afternoon.

Her hand felt hot against the wall. Everything else was cold but her hand burned, her hand left a mark when she lifted it away, a slick red brand on the clean white paint.

She crossed the room, dripping, shivering, stopping again to stand at her dresser. She touched the framed photos that sat there, a picture of her and her mother standing on the Golden Gate Bridge; a picture of her sweet-faced grandmother; a prom photo of her and group of friends in gowns and tuxes, mugging and laughing in a parking lot at Disneyland. Her fingers left little red drops where they touched the frames, the top of the unfinished dresser.

She lifted her head to her reflection in the mirror that hung above the dresser. The truth of the thing, the sight of the thing, standing in her bedroom with her ruined arms open and leaking. She stood and watched, the fear setting in, the finality of what she’d done. She stood and watched herself, a bright red puddle forming on the carpeting that always felt so soft between her toes.

Her vision was failing. This was the scariest thing, losing her sight, the room growing dark and dull.

There were other things here, familiar things, hairbrushes and makeup bottles, perfume, a small box of jewelry, silver rings and bracelets. There were carved wooden figurines here, small brown animals, a duck, a pig, a horse, a rabbit. She lifted the rabbit from the dresser, held it in her slick hand, and this kept her steady, the familiar touch of the smooth wood, the familiar shape between her fingers. This kept her steady until the room grew almost too dark to see. Then she replaced the rabbit and made her way back into the bathroom, slid back into the tub, the warm water embracing, her vision going, her vision gone, her body slipping beneath the surface and fading.

Darby stood at the dresser, his ears rushing, the carved rabbit in his gloved hand. The wood of the other figurines was rough, but the rabbit was worried smooth. There was a small chip of dried fluid on its belly. He pried it away with his thumbnail. All of the air in the room rushed in his ears. He pictured the rabbit safe in the drawer in the garage, with the ring, with the snow globe.

There was a loud banging coming from the stairwell. Darby set the rabbit back in its place on the dresser, went to the outer room. Peter was standing on the top step, banging his elbows against the walls of the stairwell. Darby stood in the doorway. This was what it looked like, this kind of sorrow. Peter banged twice more, three times more, then he slumped a little, let his arms fall to his sides. He took air in short, wheezy gasps.

“I came back for a change of clothes,” he said. He didn’t look at Darby, but into the stairwell as he spoke. “I’ve been sleeping somewhere else. I came back because I thought that no one would be here. She would be out with friends. Her mother at work.” He took air. “Her bathroom door was closed, and I could see the light under the door, I could hear the fan. I knew before I opened the door, somehow. It had never occurred to me, I had never imagined, but somehow I knew without opening the door.”

Darby listened and nodded, nodded like he’d seen Bob nod so many times. This was the correct response, to stand and nod. This kept things away.

“I opened the door, though,” Peter said. “For some reason I opened it. To confirm what I already knew.”

Peter didn’t look at Darby as he spoke. He stared at the wall of the stairwell. This was what it looked like, this kind of sorrow.

Peter turned back down the stairs to the restaurant. He would leave Darby to his work. He took the first step and something happened, he tripped or he missed a step or his legs gave out. Something. He went down hard on the steps, crashing down on his knees, tumbling over onto his side, sliding headfirst. He ended down near the door to the restaurant. He lay there, motionless. He’d held his hands up the entire time he fell, pale white skin past the sleeves of his suit coat. He held them up now as he lay at the bottom the stairs, delicate things he’d needed to save from the fall.

Darby stopped himself from nodding. He went down the stairs, looked at Peter’s hands held in the air. He did not want to touch this man. This man was contagious. His sorrow, his grief was something that could spread. Peter’s body shook. He was sobbing against the hard wood of the stairs. He was injured, possibly; he had hurt himself in the fall. Darby didn’t want to touch this man. This man was contagious. Darby pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of his suit. He did not want to touch this man, but he took Peter’s hands and lifted him from the stairs, righted him on the steps. Peter’s head hung. He didn’t look at Darby. He began to speak in a whisper, apologizing, over and over, nodding his head with each apology. Darby could feel the shame on Peter’s skin, warm and slick with sweat. He let go of Peter’s hands and took a step back, into the restaurant, to let Peter pass. He waited until Peter was seated again in the dining room before pulling on a new pair of gloves, clearing his throat and spitting into the darkness as he climbed back up the stairwell.

He stood in the bedroom with the camera. He lifted the camera to his eye, looked at the room in the frame. The walls were clean, the carpet was clean. The rushing in his ears felt like it would split his head in two. He could see the figurines on the dresser, the wooden rabbit. He could almost feel it in his hand. If he were to take it, he could keep it safe. If he were to take it and slide it into his pocket, the sound in the room, the sound in his head would cease.

“That’s my job now,” Roistler said. He stood just inside the bathroom door, his bucket packed, his paper mask hanging from his neck.

“I can do it,” Darby said. He could almost feel the figurine in his hand, the smooth wood between his fingers. “Just give me a minute alone in here and I can do it.”

Roistler came into the room, stood in front of Darby, filling the camera’s frame. “We have to get this right. Who does what.”

“This is my job,” Darby said.

“Not anymore. It’s my job now.”

Roistler held his hand out for the camera. He said something else, but Darby couldn’t hear, the rushing had grown so loud. He could only see the rabbit and then Roistler’s face close in the viewfinder, Roistler’s lips moving. He lowered the camera, handed it to Roistler. He walked across the room, past the dresser, leaving the rabbit. Stepped into the mouth of the stairwell. He kept a hand on the wall to steady himself, to keep from falling as he took each step back down.

The Mexican restaurant was wedged between two larger stores, a pet store and a store where people brought big plastic water jugs to get refilled.
Agua fresca
. Michelle had asked The Kid to wait for her outside the restaurant while she bought a gordita. She said that she was fucking starving, and that she’d rather get a gordita there than get one at a roach coach and get sick and die. Michelle always seemed to have money for snacks, extra food, even though all the other kids joked about how poor she was. The Kid wondered where she got the money, if she stole it or something. He figured that it was none of his business, but he wondered anyway.

He didn’t know why she’d asked him to wait. He’d planned on taking an alternate route from school to the burned house to work on his mural, but then suddenly Michelle was alongside him, snapping her gum, talking about something she’d seen on TV the night before about the reason for
Y2K
, the microchip in all the computers that was going to fail at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Apparently, whoever had invented and programmed the chips hadn’t thought there would ever be a year 2000, and so the chips didn’t know what to do when it actually became that year. The people on TV said that the chips were going to fritz out and that was what would screw everything up, banks and cars and the stock market and tons of stuff with the army, tanks and fighter jets and nuclear missiles. The people on TV said that the trick was to figure out a way to convince the computers that the guy who’d invented the chips was wrong, that the year 2000 could actually exist. The Kid asked Michelle if the people on TV had figured out how to do that, but Michelle said she didn’t know, she’d fallen asleep on the couch before the end of the show.

Michelle came out of the restaurant, her gordita already half eaten, shreds of cabbage poking from of the corners of her mouth. The Kid tried to remember if she’d spit out her gum before she’d gone inside. He thought that maybe she hadn’t, maybe the gum was still in her mouth mixed with the cabbage and chicken.

They walked back toward the school, even though this was the exact opposite way The Kid wanted to go. Brian and Arizona were standing together in front of the school’s big sign. Brian was wearing his track and field uniform, the same thing he’d worn on Halloween, stretching his legs up behind his back like his dad did during The Kid’s sessions. Brian saw The Kid and Michelle and leaned over to Arizona, whispered something in her ear. The Kid remembered how Arizona smelled when she’d leaned over to see the drawings in his notebook. Soap and strawberry shampoo.