by Edwin Dasso
13
Hades
I've lengthened the string on Gregor's leash so I can take him for a walk. He's pretty smart for a bug. I was worried that, with the leash tied to one of his legs, the pull on that side would cause him to walk around in circles. He learned to compensate almost immediately. The leash is tied to the hind leg on his right side, so when he wants to walk from point A to point B he angles a little bit left. We've been walking for almost an hour, now. At least it feels like an hour. My ability to gauge time is pretty much shot. I thought maybe he'd lead me to some food or an unblocked exit, but mostly he's just gone under cars to hide. I keep dragging him out, and he keeps running under. I just hope we don't run into another dead body. I'll never be able to unsee that poor guy and the look of his empty, deflated suit.
It's as hard to tell distance down here as it is to tell time. Despite the large area, the low ceiling makes it feel like we're trapped in a very small space. I've had several bouts of claustrophobia. Not panic attacks, per se, but that feeling like the walls are closing in on me. I used to get a similar feeling the first time I worked in an office. They called the floor I worked on "the cubicle farm." Most of the employees were able to lose themselves in their work. I couldn't do it. I was constantly aware of being in a little box, my life ticking away while I designed ads to sell barbecue tongs, beer can cozies, and other useless detritus of a society driven mad by consumerism. Some days it was difficult for me to breath. I imagined that if I died, I’d just stay sitting at my desk, and the cool filtered air coming in through the vent over my cubicle would mummify my corpse, and the cleaning crew would dust me off and move on to the next cubicle.
I feel like that now, so I stop to take deep breaths. There's still dust in the air, which stings my nostrils, but I no longer smell the exhaust fumes from Jax's fort construction. Gregor’s tugging at his leash. He's found something to eat, an empty Snickers wrapper with a few crumbs left inside. Probably dropped by Jax or Sandra. I give Gregor some slack, and he disappears inside the wrapper. Why don't I smell the exhaust fumes? We're near the pile of rubble that I tried to clear out of the doorway. The air here smells fresher than the air over by my Mustang. I tie Gregor's leash to a concrete block and scoop up a handful of dust. I climb up on the hood of an Audi and toss the dust up in the air. Most of it floats straight down, but a small plume swirls into a curly cue as it descends. There's an air current, and it’s coming from below one of the concrete slabs blocking the doorway. Air's flowing in from the other room. I need to get into that room. I scoop up the candy wrapper with Gregor still inside it and hurry back to get the pry bar.
The concrete slab is covered with debris, so I start clearing away the loose stones and gravel. There are a couple of big chunks with rebar sticking out, which makes them easier to grip. I start tugging at the chunk on top of the pile, and a streamer of dust and pebbles rains down from the ceiling. This is going to take some thought. Everything I know about tunneling comes from watching old movies. Charles Bronson would have shored up the doorframe.
There's a smashed Escalade just a couple of cars over. One of its doors is hanging loose, attached by one hinge. I twist it off and use my tire iron to bust off the window frame, then spend the next hour or so scraping a horizontal channel into the debris filling the doorway, about halfway between the floor and the lintel. The car door fits into the channel perfectly. Now I can scrape away at the dust and pebbles just above and behind the door, fashioning a slot and pushing the door into it an inch at a time. I remove just enough of the debris to slide my arm in past the car door. It's slow going, but soon I get into a rhythm—scrape away debris, push the door in farther, scrape, push, scrape, push. When the car door is about a foot into the doorway, my back and shoulder muscles cramp. The plan is to dig out the space below the car door but stick to the middle of the doorway, leaving a shelf of debris on either side supporting the car door and preventing a cave in.
Sandra wanders over and asks if she can help. I have her stand on a slab next to me, enlarging the space behind the car door that’s shoring up the debris. While she scrapes, I sit in front of the doorway and pull gravel and chunks of concrete from under the car door. I could probably work just as fast by myself, but maybe having something to do will improve Sandra’s mood. Besides, from down here there’s an excellent view of her excellent legs.
I stop digging to check Sandra’s progress. She’s cleared about three inches more, so I shove the car door deeper into the slot, then go back to working on the hole. I'm concentrating on breaking up a large chunk of concrete with the flat edge of my tire iron, so I don't hear Jax behind me until he speaks.
"Hey, Mister Mole-man, you gonna dig us out of here?"
He's standing, shirtless, with one hand on his hip and the other holding what looks like a can of beer. He must have done some more scrounging. Despite his belly, his bulk is impressive. He looks like a mountain, and his biceps and forearms are huge. Sandra is still working, refusing to look at him.
"That's the plan," I say. "But I don't know where this doorway leads, so don’t get your hopes up just yet."
"That's a pretty small hole you're digging. A skinny little shit like you could squeeze through it, but not me. You weren't planning on leaving your old buddy behind, were you?"
I look at the hole. He's right. I hadn't even thought about getting him out with us. It'll barely be large enough for Sandra or me. Jax could never get through it.
"I'll extend it from top to bottom once I get through to the other side. You'll have to lie on your side to crawl through. I can't widen the hole because I need the debris on the sides to keep the car door in place to prevent a cave-in."
"And how about you, pretty lady? You weren't going to leave me behind, were you?"
Sandra turns to look at Jax, but can't hold his gaze.
She mumbles, "I don't give a fuck what you do."
"I guess your father didn't teach you any manners, eh bitch?"
"Fuck off."
Jax addresses me, but keeps looking at Sandra. "What about it, Herk? Think her millionaire father was flying around the world on business trips when he should have been home raising his little girl?”
“Millionaire?”
“She didn’t tell you? God, that’s all she ever talked about at work. Daddy’s rich, but she’s mad at him. Isn’t that right, Missy? Gonna be independent to teach him a lesson. Well, maybe I ought to teach you some manners."
"I don’t see how,” I say. “You've got her beat in the rudeness department. In fact, I'd say that down here in the underworld, you're the king of bad manners."
It takes a second for my insult to register. Jax slowly shifts his attention to me. "So, that's how it is. You and Miss Bitch have teamed up. What? Did she slobber on your knob?"
"Look man, we're all trapped down here together. We shouldn't be fighting. We should be working together to get out.” I look at Sandra. “At the very least we should try to be civil."
Jax says, "Spare me the kumbaya speeches. If you get your hole dug and find a way out, come and get me. Otherwise, you can both go to hell."
He turns on his heel, raises his middle finger over his head, and marches off into the gloom, heading back to his circle of cars.
Sandra's visibly shaken. "I don’t trust that guy,” she says. “He’s dangerous.”
We work in silence for the next hour or so. Then she says, "I don’t think you should enlarge the hole for Jax. I need to get away from him."
"You obviously hit a sore spot."
"I didn't hit anything. I just didn't want to go out with him, and now he's got it in for me."
"Don't worry." I give her hand a squeeze and try to redirect the conversation. "So, what about your parents? Won’t they be wondering what happened to you?”
"My father probably is. We usually talk at least once a week. He likes to give me stock tips. Thinks it makes him sound smart. My mother and I don't talk as much as we used to. She has some very old world ideas about
how women should behave. I'm a constant disappointment to her. With a name like Sandra, you'd think she'd have been prepared for a free-thinking daughter."
"What's your name have to do with it?"
"My father named me Cassandra after a woman from an old Greek play. The god Apollo was in love with her, but she turned him down. I like the idea of being so independent you can tell a god to piss off.”
14
Violet
Dana has agreed to go with me to counseling. We’re still not having sex, and she’s still defensive and bitter, but it’s a step in the right direction. She’s at least willing to admit that we have a problem. I love her. I want her to be happy. I want us to be happy. This is the first glimmer of hope I’ve had. Maybe there is a future for us.
Of course, this makes my relationship with Violet a liability. Whatever progress Dana and I make with counseling will be blown to hell if she finds out about Violet. Despite not having had actual sex with Violet I feel guilty. I am guilty. The real betrayal for both of us has been our emotional infidelity. I’ve shared my feelings about Dana with Violet, and she’s told me all about her relationship with Brett. I guess we’ve used one another to let off steam. Lend a sympathetic ear. We’ve kind of been each other’s therapists. You don’t kiss your therapist, though. You don’t fondle your therapist’s breasts, and she doesn’t rub your thigh.
Today, I insisted we go to the restaurant at lunch. Neither of us spoke as we passed the bakery parking lot on our way to the Thai joint. She knew what I was going to say. Her ginger chicken sat there, getting cold, while I talked. No more kissing. No more parking. No more sneaking around. I tried to be gentle but firm. Matter of fact. I don’t know how I expected her to react. I didn’t expect her to start crying. She covered her face with her napkin. She sobbed for a minute, then tossed her napkin on the table.
“Fuck you,” she said.
She grabbed her purse, got up from the table, and stormed out of the restaurant. I paid the check and followed her out. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her purse and stood on the sidewalk, smoking. I’d never seen her smoke before. I’d never even smelled cigarettes on her breath. The cigarette was long and thin, and she held it between splayed fingers.
“Don’t be upset. We knew this couldn’t last.”
She exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “You know what I do most afternoons? Instead of making calls to my clients, I look at travel brochures. I daydream about the two of us at a ski lodge in the Swiss Alps or going to the opera in Vienna.”
“I didn’t know you liked opera.”
“I don’t know whether I like it or not. I’ve never been. That’s not the point. The point is that I had something. Something better than Brett and his idiot friends sitting in front of the television rooting for millionaires running around trying to hit a ball or catch a ball or toss a ball through a hoop.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” She snapped her cigarette butt into the street. “Maybe it was never going to happen, but imagining that you and I had a future helped me get through the day. I loved you, Hercule.”
I reached out to give her a hug. She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away. She said, “Let’s just go.” and marched back to the car.
15
Hades
Sandra's gone back to her Prius. I was exhausted and came back to the Mustang. I’m eating a candy bar and talking to Gregor. He's a good listener. Sometimes, when I address him directly, he looks right at me. At least that's the way it appears. Cockroach eyes have over two thousand lenses, so I guess he could be looking anywhere.
"My friend," I say, "That Sandra is hot."
Gregor leans a little to one side, which I interpret as the cockroach version of a head tilt. He turns his back on me and saunters into his pudding cup. I finish the candy bar and close my eyes, but soon I hear shouting. I sit up and lean my head out of the window. I can't tell whether the shouts are coming from Sandra's car or Jax's domain, but they sound angry, so I get up to go see what the hassle is. As I make my way through the debris, I can make out some of the words.
"Stay in your hole, you fucking scum!"
"Screw you, bitch! I was just trying to be nice."
"Nice my ass. You've been sniffing around me for months. Well, guess what? I'm not interested. Not now. Not ever."
"We're going to die down here, stupid. Why not make our last days on earth a little more, you know, friendly? You might enjoy— What the hell?"
This last is followed by the sound of glass breaking and a flurry of swearing. Sandra's standing outside Jax's ring of cars. Her stance is defiant, feet apart, one fist on her hip, the other clutching a bottle. Jax is standing behind the Hummer looking down at the shattered remains of an empty wine bottle. I call out to avoid startling them. I don't want them to start throwing stuff at me. "Hey guys. Everything all right here?"
Sandra turns to look at me, and the ferocity of her glare stops me in my tracks.
Jax shouts over her head, "Mind your business. This is between me and Miss Bitch."
Sandra chimes in. "Go back to your car, Hercule. This doesn't concern you."
Of course it concerns me. Down here I make up one third of the population. I say, "If you kill one another who's going to help me dig?" As the words leave my mouth, I know this is the wrong thing to say.
"Oh my god," Sandra says. "No wonder your wife is divorcing your ass."
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jax shouts, “Hey! What are you two talking about?”
Sandra holds up the unbroken wine bottle and shouts back, “Hercule’s just convinced me that I should smash this bottle over his head instead of yours.”
“Be reasonable,” I say. “Let’s all just calm down.”
Jax comes out from behind the Hummer. “Why? What did he do?”
“He’s one of those passive-aggressive guys. They're afraid to raise their voices. Instead, they pick away at you with disapproving little comments. They whittle away your confidence to build themselves up, and when you confront them they act all hurt and surprised.”
“That’s not me,” I say, but she goes on.
“I’ve seen how these guys operate. They’re too afraid to have a good old-fashioned fight, so they sneak in a jab when you don’t expect it, and when you call them on it they tell you you’re being ‘unreasonable’.”
“I don’t do that,” I repeat.
“Sure you do. Hell. At least with a Neanderthal like Jax you know what you’re getting. You know to get out of his way when he gets mad, or you’ll wind up with a fat lip. A guy like you just eats away a little piece of a woman's soul at a time.” She looks at the bottle in her hand and laughs. “One of you is a head-on collision and the other is rust.” She hurls the bottle past Jax, to shatter against the side of the Hummer, then walks back to her car without looking at either of us.
It seems like I've been working on this hole forever. Sandra isn't helping anymore. I have to continually stop digging to stand up, scrape out space behind the car door, and push it deeper into the slot. My back is killing me. I brought Gregor along for company. We’ve been talking to each other quite a bit. He's sitting on a waist-high slab of concrete that's leaning against the wall. I’ve wrapped his leash around a protruding corner. I know the idea that a cockroach can communicate with a human is crazy. I'm not that far gone, but still— Anyway, I don't think Gregor's too happy with me lately. We're almost out of pudding cups, so I've reduced our rations to two a day. I would have gone down to one a day, but as long as I'm digging I need the energy. I've got one candy bar left. I'll split it with him when I break through to the other room. Or when I finally give up hope.
The debris on the far side of the doorway is deeper than the doorway itself. I think a lot of this stuff piled up when I had that first cave-in. The concrete right in front of me has a length of rebar sticking out of it horizontally that's preventing me from pulling it through the hole. I'm afraid if I push it farther i
nto the hole I'll wedge it in even tighter. I back out of the hole and sit for a minute to gather my thoughts. I can't tell if Gregor is awake or napping. I actually don't know if cockroaches sleep.
"Hey Gregor. Guess what? I can't go back, and I'm afraid to go forward. Is that an appropriate metaphor or what?"
I wedge my longest pipe between the top of the slab and the debris covering it. Then I pick up a piece of concrete and give the end of the pipe a whack. The bar moves in a couple of inches. I tap it a few more times to get it set, then tee off and really smack it. The pipe slides in about a foot, and it feels like the end has broken through the rubble. I grip the pipe and start to pull it back out. I'm really putting my back into it when I hear some commotion from the other side of the garage. Jax and Sandra are shouting at one another again, but I can't make out what they're saying.
The pipe comes loose, and I reposition it so I can push the slab clear of the hole. It's hard to get any purchase on the floor, and I push on the pipe until my hands cramp up without moving the slab more than an inch. There must be a lot of debris stacked on top of it. I decide to try to clear some of that first. I pull the pipe out again just as Sandra screams. It's not an angry scream. This is a scream of fear. She sounds panicked. I pick up the pipe and go, making my way toward them through the rubble and cars, moving as fast as I can without a flashlight.
As I get closer to Jax’s ring of cars, I see that he’s got Sandra on the ground. He's pinned one of her arms with his right hand and is working to catch the other while she flails at him. His pants are down around his ankles, and her underpants are lying on the floor near her head. I shout as I come across the hood of a little Fiat.
"Hey, man! Get off her!"
He doesn't even look up. He’s breathing hard, his raspy breath mingling with Sandra's screams. As I come up behind him, his hips raise up, and I can see that he hasn't penetrated her yet. I shout again and smack him on the back of the head with my open palm. He doesn't even flinch. He gets a hold of Sandra's other hand and pins it, too. I tap him lightly on the head with the pipe, and he looks up. He turns toward me, but I'm not sure he sees me. His eyes are glazed, unfocused. Sandra sees me and stops screaming.
