Shovel Ready Page 12

  I listen to her for a bit, let her wind down. Then I explain I need to hire a nurse for a job, and she cuts me off.

  Does it involve changing a rich man’s diapers while he dreams?

  No.

  She swigs.

  Okay then. I’m in.

  Margo offers me the couch but I tell her I’ve got business to get back to in the city. I say goodnight, catch the late-night bus, bound for Port Authority.

  Then, a few stops later, hop off.

  Plot a detour.

  Hoping to clear my head.

  So the Crusade is coming in less than a week. It’s set to kick off on Sunday night. The mayor has sworn they’ll have the camps swept clean by then. Proudly points to news footage of skinny stragglers stumbling out of Central Park, begging for scraps, getting pelted by onlookers, then cuffed and carted away. No one’s sure what they’re charged with or where they end up. Some rumors say upstate. Some rumors say Fresh Kills. Some rumors say it’s best not to listen to rumors, unless you want to find out firsthand.

  Second bus unloads me in Hoboken.

  Certain times, times like these, I have a few rituals.

  Reminders, really.

  Of things I need to be reminded of. From time to time.

  Not meant for anyone else. Just for me.

  Unlock my apartment. Leave the lights out.

  Head to the kitchen. Open the icebox.

  Stand and stare into the freezer. Where I keep my parceled souvenir.

  Actually, reminder’s not the right word.

  Relic’s better.

  Freezer’s cold curls out, licks my face.

  26.

  He was a lawyer.

  He wasn’t the first one.

  He was the third.

  The first one was an accident. Maybe.

  That’s what I told myself at the time, anyway.

  The first one:

  An old trash-duty buddy heard I was in a bad place, bouncing from bed to bar to bed.

  This was in the first few months after Times Square.

  City still reeling. My apartment still empty. My Stella’s clothes still hanging undisturbed in the closet. Waiting in vain to be worn again.

  So this old trash-duty buddy tracked me down to this bar I liked on the boardwalk of Coney Island, where the front side opened out to the ocean and the seagulls loitered and chattered like barflies. I’d make the long trip out because I liked to smell the sea.

  Smelled sour. Like garbage.

  I found that comforting.

  He tracked me down and instead of offering condolences, he offered me cash. A dispute had turned ugly and he wanted me to talk to the guy. Just talk. I guess he asked me because I’d recently developed a local reputation as someone who was long past issues of personal concern.

  He’d had some argument over money or property or something.

  To be honest, I don’t remember the details.

  I don’t even think I knew them back then.

  But I was alone and out of work and bed-hopping and burning through what little cash I had left. Rick had cut me a deal and set me up on a discount trip, where I didn’t tap into any dream, I just tapped into nothing.

  Just a void.

  Until my hour was up.

  So my old trash buddy sidled up on a barstool and asked me to do him a solid.

  Which I did.

  Caught the guy outside his apartment one night. Startled him while he searched for his keys.

  Big guy. Cocky.

  Conversation moved to an alleyway.

  He threw the first punch. I’m sure of that.

  Or pretty sure.

  In any case, it got ugly.

  And I still carried my box-cutter.

  The one I’d used to slice open that garbage bag.

  My reluctant surgeon’s tool.

  I wasn’t nearly so careful on him.

  Hands were steadier, though.

  So. Problem disappeared. So did the guy.

  When you work in garbage, you have access to incineration.

  And instead of calling the cops, my friend paid me a bonus. Then lost my phone number for good.

  But not before passing it on.

  That was number one.

  The lawyer was number three.

  His jilted wife had hired me.

  She came to me in a dream.

  I was tapped in at Rick’s to the darkness, to nothing, and then there she was, like an angel, before me.

  Beautiful woman, oddly outlined in light. Face aged by abuse.

  Not the kind that comes from belt straps and backhands. That’s too downmarket. Too hands-on.

  This was just the abuse of pills, neglect, and pain, all etched in her face over time.

  She’d bribed Rick to let her slip into my dream.

  Then she led me out.

  This angel.

  We went for bubble tea. Her choice.

  Chinatown still bustling back then.

  She said she thought her husband was cheating. But not out here.

  In there.

  That’s why she bribed Rick.

  She’d never been off-body and she wanted to see what the limnosphere offered him that their life together couldn’t match.

  To her surprise, in my dream, it offered nothing.

  But I assured her that my setup was not typical. Most people prefer some frills and thrills to spice up their oblivion.

  Not many people order the abyss, straight up.

  She’d lost him, she said. He’d gone in for a business trip but now he was limning ten, fifteen hours a day. He’d left his job, cashed out his securities. She knew he’d met someone in there, some hussy, and now he wouldn’t come out.

  Hussy.

  Her word.

  They’d fought. He’d frozen her assets. Forced her to move out. He was tapped in while the moving company carted away her things. The last remnants of their life together. Boxed and bagged like crime-scene evidence.

  She said good-bye to him while he lay silently dreaming. Their marriage long dead, now her at his side, mourning it, like an open-casket funeral.

  He’d already changed all the passcodes to the bank accounts.

  But not to the apartment.

  You might recognize him, she said, as we finished our tea, almost as an afterthought.

  Why?

  He was all over the news for awhile.

  Really? For what?

  He survived Times Square. Big story. Local news ran wild with it. Front-page of the Post, three days running.

  I didn’t look at the papers after Times Square.

  So you don’t remember the Lucky Passenger?

  When I was a kid, my father was never religious. He saved his Sundays for football and quiet communion at the altar of the couch. No wine, no wafers, just beer and Pringles. He worked hard all week, he said, and if the Lord set Sunday aside as a day of rest, well, who was he to argue with the Lord?

  So on Sundays, he rested. And prayed. For the Jets.

  My mother’s family was more observant. Roman Catholics, many generations back. Her own grandmother was a black-cowled, hunched-over husk of a woman, whispering over her rosary, haunted by the unseen, sputtering curses and prayers. When my mother broke with her family and went to school to be a nurse, not a nun, it broke her grandmother’s heart. When I was a kid, my mother never made church a weekly habit. But she did keep her grandmother’s rosary hanging from the vanity.

  My father she could drag to Mass maybe twice a year. Easter and Christmas. Home in time for kickoff.

  But me she was worried about.

  Maybe she was right to be.

  Either way, for awhile, every week, she’d drop me off for Sunday school. Car pulled to the curb. Hair up in curlers. Lean across the front seat to kiss me on the cheek and promise to pick me up at this exact same spot when Sunday school let out. I could tell her all about what I’d learned.

  Figured I’d memorize a few verses. Say a few Hail Marys. Take First Commu
nion. What could it hurt?

  None of it stuck, though. And once I got old enough to outgrow my First Communion suit, I found other ways to occupy my Sundays, and my parents didn’t complain too loudly.

  So I don’t remember much of church. A few stories. The odd parable.

  The oily smell of incense, swung from the end of a chain.

  But there was one thing that left an impression.

  Ornate box they kept at the front. By the altar.

  Reliquary.

  It was the easiest thing in the world, like delivering takeout.

  The apartment was empty, as advertised, save for him sleeping.

  Sensors purring. Monitors cooing.

  Fresh feed-bag on an IV.

  Not too old, maybe late thirties, well-built guy and as handsome as his wife was pretty. Impeccably suited, down to the silk pocket square that he paid someone to fluff for him each day.

  Palatial apartment, tastefully furnished, top floor, panoramic river views.

  Realtor’s fantasy. Only a wish for most anyone else.

  Yet here he was. Lost in the dream.

  Framed photos of the happy couple still propped up everywhere as mementoes.

  And on the walls, front pages. Framed.

  Mounted like trophies.

  Post. Daily News. Times. USA Today.

  The lawyer, smiling broadly, holding up his right hand. Fingers wide.

  Headlines trumpeting.

  FORTUNE SPARES THE LUCKY PASSENGER.

  The lawyer’s name, I learned from the articles, was Charles Pierce.

  Come to think of it, I did remember him.

  Not from headlines, though. From billboards.

  The Lucky Passenger and his famous lucky fingers.

  The reliquary was treated with a special reverence. Carefully maintained. Never opened, no matter what. Even if you inquired politely for a peek.

  So one day I asked my Sunday school teacher what the big deal was.

  He looked at me. Got serious.

  That box contains the dust of the bones of saints.

  What? Like a coffin?

  Not exactly. It’s a holy place to keep that which has been touched by God. So we may all be inspired. And benefit from its power.

  So like souvenirs, I said.

  Not souvenirs, he said. Relics.

  Charles Pierce had scrambled down the stairs at Wall Street station to catch the uptown 2 train express.

  Got snared in the entranceway.

  Turnstile jammed.

  Swiped his subway card once. Twice. Again.

  PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN.

  Subway waiting. Doors gaping.

  PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN.

  PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN.

  PLEASE SWIPE AGAIN AT THIS TURNSTILE.

  Stupid card keeps—can’t get the—doesn’t anything work right in this fucking—

  Two-tone signal as the subway doors slide shut.

  Charles Pierce swiping.

  Cursing.

  Top of his lungs.

  —GODDAMN THIS FUCKING CITY—

  Turnstile never budged.

  Charles Pierce stands chewing out the bored-looking booth attendant, finger jabbing the Plexiglas as the uptown express slips from the station.

  Red taillights recede into the darkness.

  He’s still steaming, silently fuming, on the platform when the ground lurches and the tunnel emits a dull bored faraway roar.

  THE LUCKY PASSENGER.

  All the headlines proclaimed it.

  ONE SWIPE FROM DEATH.

  Who knows why God chose to spare me, of all people?

  Said again and again with a newly sainted shrug.

  Repeated in story after story. Quote after quote.

  On the couch of the Today show.

  I honestly can’t say why God chose me, Lorelei.

  The host nods sympathetically. Recrosses long legs.

  He holds up his right hand.

  This hand—I was holding the swipe card in this hand—

  Chokes up. A well-rehearsed act. Voice hitching on the same word—special—every time.

  I don’t know why God spared me, Lorelei. But I have to believe it’s because He has something special in store for me.

  Lorelei nods. Her hand on his knee.

  Cut to commercial.

  He wasn’t the only one that day with a story like that, of course.

  Lots of people died. Lots didn’t.

  He’s just the one who was smart enough to tell his story to anyone who’d listen. Tell it, then sell it.

  First to sell newspapers. Then lotto tickets. Then toothpaste. Then anything he could point at with his famous lucky fucking fingers.

  Charles Pierce on a billboard, arms outstretched.

  LET’S SEE WHAT BARGAIN MY LUCKY FINGERS HAVE PICKED OUT FOR YOU TODAY!

  After that, her husband was never quite the same, his wife told me over bubble tea. It became clear, with all that attention, her meager devotion was no longer going to be enough. He’d been spared for some higher purpose, he truly believed that. And apparently that higher purpose was selling six-inch submarine sandwiches, among other things.

  Half a hoagie grasped in those famous fingers.

  Smile to the camera.

  Lucky me!

  So why should he go back to the normal life? he told her. The one he’d left behind?

  But the fame began to drag on him. The constant nagging for handshakes and autographs.

  And then he’d started tapping in.

  And that’s when she’d lost him, she said.

  There are three types of relics.

  I know. I Googled it.

  First order of relic. The physical body of a saint.

  Second order of relic. An object the saint once had in his or her possession.

  Third order of relic. An object that’s come in contact with the first order of relic.

  Three orders. Like three outcomes.

  And that’s it.

  The first order, of course, is the holiest. Physical remnants. Which come in many varieties. All with Latin names.

  Ex capillus.

  Ex ossibus.

  Ex cineribus.

  Ex pelle.

  Ex carne.

  From the hair.

  From the bones.

  From the ashes.

  From the skin.

  From the flesh.

  He lay asleep in an apartment littered with pictures from a life he no longer wanted. Of a wife he had no use for.

  A roomful of souvenirs.

  Seemed senseless, this flesh-and-blood body just lying there, like a discarded husk.

  Body slowly shriveling under a ten-thousand-dollar suit.

  He still had everything I’d lost. Everything I’d die to get back.

  Yet he still checked out.

  Hard not to see it that way, anyway, as I stood there, holding my box-cutter, watching him drift in a dream.

  Surrounded by all those photos.

  One swipe from death.

  And me thinking.

  I don’t know why God chose you either.

  But here we are.

  Should have left him there. Left it at that.

  Dead lawyer in a bed. Hard to imagine a surplus of questions. Or mourners.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead I carted his body out in a mover’s box on a dolly. Wore an old pair of coveralls and a painter’s cap tugged low.

  Took his body to the usual place. To burn it.

  No doubt security cams at his building caught me coming and going. The whole operation sloppy enough that I figured eventually someone would come looking for us both. To be honest, I didn’t much worry.

  Maybe welcomed it.

  Felt the whole world was already spinning the wrong way on its axis.

  So let them come for me.

  But no one did.

  I guess law enforcement had its hands full, what with the city still exploding.

  And it turned out t
here was no one else left in his life to raise a finger in complaint.

  Not even a lucky one.

  The most holy relic, by the way, is the Eucharist. The communion wafer that’s the literal flesh of Christ, transmuted the moment you receive it on your tongue.

  Like I told you, I took First Communion.

  If you believe in that sort of thing.

  Edible flesh.

  The holiest ritual.

  But don’t worry.

  I didn’t eat the lawyer.

  But I did take some souvenirs.

  Just four.

  Left the thumb.

  Box-cutter wouldn’t cut it.

  So I used a linoleum knife instead.

  Curved blade. Have to be careful.

  Those things are extra-sharp.

  Packed a Ziploc with ice.

  Wrapped them up in butcher’s paper.

  Stashed the whole thing in a duffel bag.

  Incinerated the rest of him.

  Souvenirs are always a bad idea.

  But these aren’t souvenirs.

  They’re relics.

  Ex carne.

  From the flesh.

  Duffel bag dripping on the subway ride home.

  When I met his wife again, she paid the back half and thanked me then sat and cried in that same bubble-tea café.

  At first I thought she was regretting what she’d done.

  Then she told me.

  She hadn’t been entirely straight with me. She’d known what he was doing in there.

  She’d hired someone to tail him into his dream. It’s hard to do, but not impossible, if you’re technically proficient and ethically flexible. It’s one of many services offered by Rick, for example.

  So the tail trailed him into his personal construct. The dream he’d built for himself. Abandoned his life for. Abandoned her for.

  Came back with a full report.

  She’d expected a lavish hotel with some hooker or high-school sweetheart. Or perhaps some more unspeakable depravity. Some secret shameful desire he could never share.

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  It was just their life, exactly re-created. To the last detail.