Shovel Ready Read online

  Troubled girl. Lost her parents young.

  Came to church with an aunt and uncle.

  Caught Harrow’s eye. A long while back.

  He took an interest.

  When Rachel was young, maybe ten, Harrow became a kind of surrogate father. He wasn’t around much, given his schedule, but he provided for her. Showed her favor. She was over at the house enough that she and Grace became like sisters, more or less. They always joked that Grace was like Heidi, living carefree in the Alps, and Rachel was like Clara, the sickly cousin come to take the mountain air.

  They grew up together. They got older.

  She even warned Grace against dating that boy who asked for the photographs.

  One night Harrow called Rachel into his study. She thought maybe he was going to talk to her about offering to help her with college. He’d always been so generous. Even so, that was still a few years away.

  Instead he told her about this marvelous new ministry.

  Paved With Gold.

  I want you to be one of my very first angels, is how he put it.

  He personally escorted her to the camp. She could barely believe it. The famous T. K. Harrow, with her on his arm. She never went to prom so this felt to her like prom night.

  He delivered her to the doorstep and said he couldn’t wait for her to come back and tell him just how real the new heaven he was building felt.

  She entered the camp’s main building, which was built to look like a barn. Sodium lamps floated in the dark rafters. Beneath them there lay a checkerboard of hundreds of white-sheeted cots. But only a dozen dreamers so far, tapped in here and there. My pilgrims, Harrow had called them. When she walked in, the nurses stood to applaud her. She’d worn the best dress she had.

  Ironed it twice.

  The empty beds laid out so lovingly. Kindly nurses to tuck you in under sheets that smelled like spring. A scent that was hard to place, maybe gardenias.

  The tube slides in painlessly.

  The nurse leans over and you say a prayer together. She wears a white folded cap, pinned to her hair, like an old-time nurse. She kisses your forehead. You assure her you’ll see her again soon and tell her all about it. She says she sure hopes so, but she also tells you that, for a lot of people, when they get to heaven, they don’t ever want to tap out again.

  You smile, and get drowsy, your eyelids drop like a heavy curtain at the end of a play. And you swear to yourself in that last waking moment, even as you still feel the loosening grip of the nurse’s hand slip away, that you hear the distant lullaby of harps, you’re absolutely sure that you can.

  At Harrow’s personal orders they tapped her out temporarily and put her under quarantine in an adjacent infirmary, where Rachel lay for a few hours in locked restraints in a sick bed, wondering exactly which of these two worlds she was torn between was the horrible dream.

  Normally no one would have been allowed to see her, but she got word out to Grace Chastity through a junior pastor who’d long harbored a crush on her. Grace Chastity still had some special privileges also, daughter of the minister and all.

  At this point, Grace wasn’t showing yet.

  So when she got word she came to Rachel’s room at night and visited Rachel and Rachel said nothing. She just smiled and strained against her cuffs as Grace stroked her cheek and she cried.

  Then Rachel asked Grace if she still carried that knife.

  What are you talking about?

  Please don’t ask me anything. Just help me get out of here. Don’t ask me why just please help me get out of here.

  So Grace tugged at the locked restraining strap and then, thwarted, pulled from her boot the five-inch knife which she’d been carrying every day since that night when her father thundered drunkenly into her room, waving a tablet, bright with pictures of her, like he was Moses catching the fallen praying to the golden calf. The night that she’d reflexively clutched the covers to her chin, as though they offered some protection, rather than simply something else for him to strip away.

  Grace sawed through the first restraint.

  Rachel’s right hand sprang free.

  Then Grace circled the bed to cut free her other arm but she couldn’t get the angle right on the restraint and Rachel said here let me have it I can reach it better than you can so Grace in a thoughtless moment gave her the blade.

  And Rachel without hesitation slashed it brightly across her bound left wrist then plunged it into her chest, plunging and plunging, smiling at Grace Chastity and saying good-bye good-bye I love you I love you I hope I will see you again one day.

  What Grace would clearly remember forever is how she plunged with such anger, as though to drive something out.

  Saying let this blood wash me clean oh Lord please Lord as she bled red widely on the stiff white sheets, until her strength drained away and she was lost in the swallowing stain.

  And Persephone stood over her, and she took back the blade, and she kissed her friend on the forehead, and wiped the blade clean, and then she ran.

  24.

  I take the brochure from my pocket, unfold it, lay it out flat on the coffee table.

  PAVED WITH GOLD.

  WHY WAIT?

  Change of plan.

  No sniper shot. No side-on suicide motorcade collision. No kamikaze attacks, no stealthy slit from the shadows.

  No surprises. No sudden oblivion.

  Because Harrow needs to know.

  He needs to know who. And he needs to know why.

  I fold the brochure and hide it in my pocket and don’t tell anyone this as we sit in Rick’s Chinatown flat, his sofa as shapeless as a deflating dinghy, and the three of us, me, Rick, and Mark Ray, all trapped on it together like survivors on the first day of month number two, adrift at sea.

  Persephone’s pregnant. Persephone gets a chair.

  Mina Machina, Rick’s live-in, comes slouching out of the kitchen, slurping at something steaming in a bowl. She’s got long hair and she’s alarmingly skinny, so she looks like a long wooden stand built to hold up a black wig. The wig could use a brushing too.

  She giggles at something only she hears or understands, then lets the hot bowl slip and spill with a clatter.

  Classic tapper. Still dreaming.

  She retrieves, then wrestles with, a mop, which in her hands looks like an identical twin held upside-down, hair shocked white.

  I ignore her and lay out the plan to the room.

  We need to find a way to get to Harrow while he’s here in New York for his crusade. As Mark said, there’s only two ways this ends. We either hand over Persephone or we convince Harrow to stop asking. We’re going to go with the second one. I’ll handle that part.

  Mark shoots me a look. This is the look that says I’m lying, because he actually said there were three ways this could end. But I figured I’d leave out the outcome where Harrow kills me. In any case, that’s for me to worry about.

  I continue. Lay out phase two. The post-Rachel part of the plan.

  Rick, we also need to find a way to gate-crash Paved With Gold. We need to get into Harrow’s heaven and get everyone out. Everyone.

  Rick looks perplexed. Sparks a cigarette.

  You want to crash heaven and then send everyone home? Why do you want to shit on the picnic?

  I wave the smoke away. Nod to Persephone.

  We’ve got a pregnant lady here.

  Rick looks at her. Looks at me. Really was hoping to finish that cigarette.

  Stubs it out. Doesn’t matter where. The whole apartment’s an ashtray.

  Sorry. My bad.

  Just tell me if it’s possible. Like what you did with Mark when I was tapped in with Harrow before. Slide someone in, uninvited.

  Sure, crashing in one person is easy enough. Tapping out everyone else who’s also in that construct? All at once? That’s trickier.

  I don’t care if it’s tricky. I want to know if it’s possible.

  Rick rubs his palms on his thighs. Looks lost without
his cigarette. Then shrugs.

  Sure. Anything’s possible. Sort of.

  And what do you need from us?

  I need someone inside. I can tap people out one by one from out here. It’s slow going. You have to find them and then sever the link. And it’s a lot easier if the people inside know what’s happening.

  Meaning what?

  Meaning I need someone in there to give them a nudge. You know, pinch me, I’m dreaming, that kind of thing. Also, it helps a lot if they actually want to leave.

  I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that.

  I turn to Mark Ray.

  Okay. So that’s you and me, Mr Angel.

  Mark extends a consoling pastor’s hand to squeeze my shoulder, like I’ve come to him for advice.

  I hate to say this, friend, but last time we tried this, you flailed around in there like a fat kid in water wings drowning in the shallow end.

  Then Mark pivots to Rick, like it’s time for the grown-ups to talk.

  I’ll go in. I can handle that part. But are you sure you can crash me into Paved With Gold? That thing’s got to be a vault.

  Rick winces, wrinkling Chinese tattoos.

  Hard to say. When I crashed that country church, I learned a lot about their protocols, and those tend to be consistent across the board. That’s the good news. The bad news is, last time they weren’t expecting us. I’m guessing that won’t be the case this time around. Also, that country-church construct? That was a quickie one-off, whipped up for your meeting. Designed for guests, so it was easy to crash. This heaven place is guaranteed to be a much more complicated construct. More secure. Walls are much higher, so to speak.

  Mina, still waltzing with the mop.

  You gotta piggyback.

  Ricks waves her off. Like a bad smell.

  She repeats.

  An octave higher.

  You gotta piggyback.

  I’m interested. So I ask Rick.

  What’s that?

  Rick rubs his temples like he just got hit by the nastiest migraine ever, and that headache is now dancing with a mop in his kitchen.

  Then he spreads out his thin fingers, covered in silver skull rings. One skull per finger, thumbs too. Sterling graveyard. Then he lays it out. In laymen’s terms.

  Despite what my beautiful life partner says, piggybacking is just a fucking stunt. Look, I’m a cocky asshole gizmo daredevil and even I don’t do it anymore.

  Sure. But what is it?

  You slide someone in on someone else’s dream, someone who’s been invited into the construct. Basically slip them in before the door closes. But it’s a very dumb thing to do.

  Why’s that?

  You ever see kids on skateboards hitch rides on the back of buses? It’s kind of like that, except with your consciousness. You fuck it up, you will skin your knee. Badly.

  How badly?

  Come by my place, I’ll show you the room where I keep those people. They don’t mix too well with the general populace anymore.

  Tugs at a skull ring. Twists it. Continues.

  Besides, definitely no one’s going to invite either of you two into their heavenly clubhouse, so it’s a nonstarter, since there’s no one to piggyback in on—

  Persephone speaks up.

  I can do that.

  What?

  They’ll invite me in. If I ask to meet my father—

  I interject.

  Absolutely not.

  Mark looks at me.

  It’s not a terrible idea.

  Let’s set the bar for ideas a little higher than not terrible.

  Mark persists.

  Look, she can’t get hurt in there. Not really—

  There are a lot of things they can do to her. Even in there.

  —but I’ll go in with her, to protect her. I’ll be the one to piggyback in. Rick—I mean, you can do that, right?

  Rick thinks. Twists a silver skull. Then nods.

  Mark turns back to me.

  You’ve seen me in there. You know I can handle myself. Better than you can, in there. And she’s the only one of us who can possibly convince Harrow to tap in for a meeting. And if the goal is to tap everyone out, people in there will trust her a lot more readily than they’ll trust me. Harrow’s daughter? They’ll follow her out. Familiar face and all—

  Sure. Familiar face of a disgraced runaway—

  Spademan, think about it. She lures Harrow in for a meeting. I follow her in and we take care of everyone in there. You find Harrow in his bed and take care of him out here. It’s the only way this works—

  No, Mark. I said absolutely—

  Persephone cuts me off. Fiercely.

  Look, I am very grateful for all that you’ve done for me, but I’m not your fucking daughter. I’ll do what I want. And I’m doing this. I need to.

  There is a long silence. During which we all listen to the stillness of Chinatown.

  Broken finally by Mina’s best Axl Rose falsetto.

  Mop becomes a mike stand.

  Knock knock knocking on heaven’s door.

  I figure it’s time to call the meeting to a close.

  So. New plan.

  We break into heaven, set everyone free, lure in Harrow himself by dangling his runaway daughter, secretly slip Mark in behind her somehow, using some technique that Rick, the cockiest gizmo in Chinatown, isn’t even sure is possible, they give Harrow a good talking-to, make him see the error of his wicked ways, perhaps offer up an apology to the daughter he fucked and maybe probably knocked up, all while I’m out here tracking down his flesh-and-bone body in the nuts and bolts, somehow sidestepping Simon and the rest of his security so I can get close enough to dispatch the holy man to actual heaven, where he’ll be free to compare his ginned-up version to the real thing.

  Seems simple enough.

  I have no doubt he’ll end up there either. His heavenly reward, I mean. I long ago stopped believing that we’re sorted into groups for our eternal retribution, or that there’s any door, or pearly gate, that you can’t pry open, given enough gold.

  I may have once had some thin faith in something like cosmic justice, but now I believe in box-cutters.

  Everything else I left buried in a tunnel along with the number 2 train.

  25.

  We’ll also need a nurse so I contact Margo.

  Margo was my mother’s roommate in nursing school, best friend for life after that. When I was a kid she used to sit at our kitchen table, blowing smoke out her nostrils like an angry bull. Nicest woman in the world though. A laugh that could swallow a room. I haven’t seen her since my mother passed. My mother didn’t last much longer after that incident with the tardy ambulance.

  I catch a bus out to the Jersey suburbs, an hour ride to Hackensack. As the city peels away, it feels much saner. Suburban. Almost like life as it was. From the bus you can see into people’s lit-up living rooms. The houses out here aren’t full of tappers in their silver torpedoes, just people on flowered sofas, planted in front of TVs.

  Yes, they still make TV shows somewhere. The rest of the country is still pretty shiny, from what I hear. Apparently the West Coast is more or less the same. Sunshine. Palm trees. Beautiful women in drop-top convertibles. Singing surfers. Moral rot. The whole enchilada, in the shape of California.

  I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been. At one time I thought of relocating, right after Times Square. Figured they’ve got to have garbage out there too.

  Very same thought made me stay in the end. A country buried in trash from coast to coast.

  As for the rest of it, the in-between part, I hear it’s relatively clean and still open for business, like a plucky dollar store. No longer the land of milk and honey, maybe, but at least you can still get high-grade pharmaceuticals on every street corner on the cheap. Most places, they call it the Toothless Tap-In. A dream you huff out of a paper bag.

  Really, it’s just New York that got nuked, cordoned off, shut down, shunned. Capital of the world, cut loose to
drift into the sea.

  The country’s soul, on a funeral pyre.

  Margo’s in a low-rise. Lots of buildings out here are basically just dorms for support staff, the servant class, who ride in daily to the city to fidget with breathing tubes, feed tubes, shit tubes, piss tubes. Tubes that run in and out like highways for all the rush-hour traffic of the human body. Then all the Margos of the world ride the bus back home to catch the day’s events on the TV. Or escape the day’s events.

  Thing about Margo, she’s the unhealthiest nurse ever. Chain smokes, obese, has to stop to catch her breath while she’s catching her breath.

  Then again, as she likes to say, what does health have to do with being a nurse anymore?

  She opens a beer for her, then one for me, puts them on the coffee table between us like we’re playing chess with only two pieces. I notice there’s already several empties standing at attention in the sink. Don’t imagine she’s had a dinner party lately either.

  She follows my eyes to the empties.

  So my recycling box is full. What brings you out to Hackensack?

  Just wanted to check in on you.

  That’s a funny sentiment to suddenly swell up after eight years.

  I’m sorry. I got busy. You know the city.

  Really? What are you busy with?

  Just the city. It keeps me busy enough.

  Well, it’s good to see you.

  Margo, you ever think of moving closer? Plenty of room in Hoboken. Or Park Avenue, for that matter.

  She looks at me like I just asked her if she’s ever thought of giving up plumbing and moving right into the sewer.

  So I skip to the next question.

  How are you keeping? I’m sorry I haven’t been out sooner to see you.

  Well, if you had come out, I could have told you, I was very sorry to hear ab out your wife.

  Thank you.

  We clink longnecks.

  She was a beautiful girl. Such a shame. What they did.

  I appreciate it.

  Shame what happened to this country.

  With Margo, you’re never far from a tirade. She’s not quite the happy snorting bull I remember from my kitchen-table days. She’s bigger than ever, but seems deflated. I always figured that one day she’d work her way through every last person in the world to be angry at, and that would leave only her, and then that would be it.