Sleep Tight

by Jeffrey Jacobson

  Janelle massaged her temple and squeezed the bridge of her nose with her left hand while her right clutched the stairway railing. She eased her way downstairs, down the concrete steps to the employees-only restroom. Why the hell had she decided to wear her highest heels this morning? Any other day, she could practically run a marathon in any of her shoes, but right now, the tequila and tacos from last night at Taco Loco were threatening to erupt, and Janelle, quite frankly, wasn’t sure which orifice they might spew from. The way she felt, the contents of her entire intestinal tract might just squirt from her goddamn ears.

  You knew you had to be at work at six, so quit’cher bitchin’, Brandi’s voice sang in her aching head. Brandi, that tanned bitch, didn’t have to be at work today. Brandi worked at some chic travel agency, fawning over rich pricks and gushing about Caribbean vacations all damn day, but her boss had told her to stay home until this mess with the rat flu was straightened out. So she was home, curled up in her bed in their apartment in Lincoln Park.

  And to top it off, Janelle’s period had hit with a vengeance last night. She’d slapped the shit out of her alarm clock only to find her eight-hundred-thread-count sheets spotted with blood. She couldn’t win. She’d dragged the sheets and comforter off the bed, praying she hadn’t stained the mattress, and dumped the mess in a corner of her room. Somehow, she’d managed to find her way into the shower, where she’d watched the sad remnants of last night’s chicken and lettuce collect on the silver holes of the drain after she vomited. Twice.

  Still. She’d made it to work, even with only half the buses running. So fuck everybody. Who cared if she could barely walk. She’d punched in, dammit. And just like she had thought, there was nothing happening at work. Nobody was checking out, and there sure as hell wasn’t anybody checking in. Not at six in the fucking morning anyway. And the thing of it was, nobody else was at work either. That was the worst part. She’d been the only one dumb enough, the only one desperate enough, to actually come in to work.

  Last night, you would have thought that the whole rat-flu thing would have scared everybody off, but God, she’d never seen Rush Street so crowded. The bars, the clubs, everything was full. There was this vibe in the air. Janelle couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it was as if the thought of danger had amplified the desire to escape into music and alcohol and lust. Everybody was going crazy, even the bartenders. She hadn’t bought one drink all night. She couldn’t move two steps in any direction without bumping into cute guys. She still couldn’t quite figure out how she and Brandi had ended up back at their place by themselves. Maybe it was for the best. She did have to work the next day after all.

  Once downstairs, she was in luck. The women’s restroom was empty. It wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the guest restroom just off the lobby, but here, she knew she probably wasn’t in any danger of being disturbed. She stumbled past the sink to the two stalls, locking the handicapped door behind her. She wriggled her pencil skirt down to her knees and sank gratefully onto the toilet.

  She set her phone on the toilet roll dispenser and pulled out her tampon. Just as she had thought, it was soaked. The sight and smell of the blood threatened to make her gorge rise, and that was the last thing she needed, to puke all over her panties and skirt, which were sketchy enough anyway, while she sat on the friggin’ toilet.

  She gritted her teeth as her body evacuated what felt like white-hot lava into the bowl while she pinched the tampon string. She couldn’t dispose of it because some idiot, most likely a cock-sucking man who had no idea what he was doing, had installed the receptacle out of reach of anybody sitting on the toilet. Beads of sweat popped out on her forehead and she tried to only breathe through her mouth.

  The thought of the used tampon dangling from her hand made her stomach roll uneasily yet again, and in a moment of rage, she simply threw the damn tampon at the uncomfortable box on the wall. The tampon bounced off, leaving a streak of clotted red viscera, and dropped to the floor.

  If she made it through the day without staining her clothes, she promised herself a long hot bath tonight, to hell with the period, and a glass of red wine. And if Brandi wanted in the bathroom, well then, too damn bad.

  Janelle started to see how this was all Brandi’s fault anyway. Sure, Brandi would blame her, but who had been dragging whom to the bar for all those flaming shots with those DePaul frat boys? The more she thought about it, the more she thought Brandi needed to be suffering right along with her.

  She fumbled for her phone and knocked it off the toilet paper dispenser. It bounced on the tiled floor and came to rest out of sight, behind and under her. “Really? Really?” she said under her breath, eyes on the ceiling as her fingers swept across the tiles, searching.

  Something heavy, with matted, wet fur brushed against the back of her hand.

  Janelle shrieked and jerked her hand back.

  The thing hissed at her and scrabbled across the floor, darting through her stall, before disappearing around the corner to the sink.

  The awful sensation of being chained to the toilet seat as seemingly everything inside of her, including all of her internal organs, slid into the bowl finally passed, and she cautiously bent over, peering under the stall wall. The bathroom was empty.

  She sat back, worried that the fear might make her vomit. She tried to control her breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax. It was just a rat.

  She gave a hitching exhale, like she was sliding down an icy road and flinched every time she bounced over crack. Just a rat. It was gone, under the door. She wasn’t happy to see a rat in the restroom on the best of days, but now, with all that flu stuff in the news, it made her want to cry.

  She sniffed, looking at the ceiling again, determined not to smudge her mascara. She looked bad enough as it was. She bent down again, this time looking at the phone. It sat by itself. No more rats. Staring at the phone, she could think of one person that deserved to share her misery. It was the least she could do.

  Brandi’s groggy voice said, “Oh, you bitch.”

  “Oh, don’t ‘oh bitch’ me, you bitch,” Janelle said. “You won’t believe me. I just saw a rat. I’m dying in here, and there’s a damn rat running on the floor.”

  Underneath her, out of her sight, two bedbugs wriggled out from under the toilet, where the bowl was bolted onto the floor. It had been sloppily sealed with silicone and the bugs oozed from a small gap. More bugs followed.

  Brandi yawned. “You called me ’cause of that, are you kidding me?”

  “Don’t you know anything? The rats, you know, the rat flu?”

  Brandi grunted sleepily, said, “Yeah, that’s awful.”

  A steady line of bugs emerged through the hole under the toilet. More crawled from the air vent in the ceiling.

  Brandi yawned again.

  “Oh, no. No. There’s no way you get to go to sleep. Don’t you hang up. I’ll keep calling. There’s nobody at work. So don’t think I won’t. I’ll call and call and call, and you’re gonna have to talk to me sooner or later so it might as well be now, bitch.”

  Bugs burst from the gap between the toilet tank and the wall and marched steadily down the wall.

  A fresh spasm jolted Janelle’s abdomen and she closed her eyes, riding the latest wave out. Brandi heard the sounds and wrinkled her nose, “Are you fucking kidding me? Please don’t, oh no. You’re in the bathroom right now, aren’t you? Oh. My. God. You are sooooo disgusting.”

  “Bitch, please. Don’t. Just talk to me. I just wanna die.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. It’s okay. That bathroom, what? It’s in the basement, you told me. So it’s probably just a rat that’s trying to get to shelter or something. It doesn’t care about you. It’s gonna be okay. Really.”

  “But what about the disease?”

  “It’s only if they bite you or something. So just chill, you’re okay, okay?”

  The spasm passed, and Janelle wondered if she should dare to wipe herself and insert a ne
w tampon. She had to get used to that thought for a while, and rested her head on her knees. Through half-closed eyes, she watched a little bug trundle confidently along between her shoes. She blinked, and watched the bug move with a purpose, straight to the used tampon.

  The bloody cotton tube was crawling with insects.

  She gasped and jerked her feet off the floor. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “You won’t believe this. Oh my god.”

  “What?”

  “This, this is how my morning is going. I’m not even going to try to tell you.” Janelle gave an unhinged giggle. “You need to see this yourself so you can see. I’m going to send you a video.”

  “Oh, come on, I—”

  Janelle hung up. Clicked on CAMERA, then switched over to VIDEO. Bracing her feet on the walls, she got a shot of the tampon, with what looked like fat red ants clambering all over it. She zoomed in. The lighting was awful, and the zoom didn’t do much but blow up all the pixels, but it looked like the insects were relishing the fresh blood. She zoomed back out to give some perspective. Several lines of bugs marched on the used tampon, all from under her toilet.

  She scratched absentmindedly at her waist with her left hand, still focused on the phone in her right. The sight of the bugs had not sickened her; they hadn’t added to her nausea. Instead, she found the movement and documentation of the bugs fascinating. The opportunity to prove to her roommate that this morning was by far the worst morning in the history of the world was enough to satisfy her and settle her gag reflex.

  Even when she looked away from the phone’s display and saw that the bugs had moved up the toilet en masse and were now crawling across her thighs was not cause for immediate panic. She stood, forgetting the lines of bugs that crisscrossed the floor, and experimentally tried to brush the bugs off her torso. They weren’t much bigger than bell pepper seeds, and clung to her skin with the same stubborn tenacity as those same seeds, resisting being washed away by the kitchen sink faucet or even the vegetable knife.

  She finally realized that the bugs were now surging up her high heels and up her legs, settling on her bare skin and latching on somehow. Before, when she had first seen the bugs, there had been dozens. Now, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands, jockeying for position, fighting to find an empty patch of skin, so they could sink their strange, undulating teeth into her exposed flesh.

  And only then did she start slapping at the bugs. She might have been slapping at the wind. The bugs continued to rise from the floor, unfolding up her legs like a horrible wave. She grabbed at her skirt and tried to pull it up in a vain attempt to stop the bugs from crawling into her pubic region.

  The bugs though, smelled blood, and flowed up her legs and wriggled under her damp panties.

  Janelle jerked the bolt open and stumbled out of the stall. The bugs had reached her armpits. Her heels slipped. The phone dropped from her hands as she reached out for support. Dizzy from the loss of blood, she fell into the wall, and sank to the floor. There was time for a final exhale, and the bugs swarmed over her skull, crawling into her open mouth. Her nose. Her eyes.

  CHAPTER 51

  8:47 AM

  August 14

  They spent the night at the bar until the bartender kicked them out at four. Ed, Qween, and Dr. Menard crashed at Sam’s apartment, while Sam sat in the kitchen, chewing nicotine gum and drinking ice water. When the sun filled the kitchen, he woke everyone up and they wordlessly piled back into the car.

  Ed decided to go out for breakfast at The Golden Waffle. They filed inside, exhausted. The place was empty except for one cab driver who didn’t want to go home to his wife. A sleepy waitress gestured at the empty dining room and told them to sit anywhere they felt like. The cook eyeballed them from inside the kitchen as if they’d interrupted something important.

  The meal was a quiet affair. When they were finished, Sam took the check and told the waitress, “More coffee.”

  They sipped their coffee in silence. Qween finished her mug and snapped her fingers to get the waitress’s attention. She pointed at the empty cup and waddled off to the bathroom.

  When she was out of earshot, Sam spread his hands, palms out, and looked Dr. Menard in the eye. “Sorry about the tap on the head there. I jumped to conclusions. I ah . . . sorry.”

  Dr. Menard touched the raw spot on his forehead and winced. He shrugged. “I’ll live. Could have been worse, I guess.”

  “Things can always be worse,” Ed said. “You’ll have to accept our unofficial apologies for the time being. You want to file a complaint or anything like that, I suppose somebody might get back to you in a couple of months. Or years. There’s not much rush to investigate things when cops overstep their bounds here, you understand.”

  Dr. Menard shook his head. “Understood.”

  The waitress refilled their mugs. More customers trickled inside. The place grew louder.

  “So what now?” Dr. Menard asked.

  “We find ourselves a bar, baby,” Qween said, settling back into the booth.

  “Damned if I’ve got a better idea,” Sam said.

  “I could go to the media,” Dr. Menard said. “Let people know what’s really going on down here. Get the public’s attention. You guys know somebody at the newspapers or one of the TV stations, right?”

  Sam snorted and shook his head. As a general rule, detectives did not hang out with anybody associated with the media.

  “Maybe,” Ed said. “I got maybe someone that would listen.”

  Sam was curious. “Who the hell do you talk to?”

  Ed said, “None of your damn business.”

  Sam grinned. “Oh, now I know. It’s that short one, that poor girl they send out to car crashes and bad weather.”

  “Yeah. So what.” A pause. “Don’t you dare tell Carolina.”

  “Never.”

  Ed wandered away to make the call. They heard him say, “Is this the famous hotshot girl reporter, Cecilia Palmers?” and laugh.

  Qween said, “I already tried this, and nobody listened.”

  Sam said, “I know, Qween. I know. It was a good plan. Wish to hell somebody had listened. Maybe things would be different. All we can do now is let folks know the inside story. Put some pressure on these assholes.”

  Ed slid back into the booth. “It’s all set. We’re gonna meet Cecilia out in front of City Hall in an hour. Just so we’re clear, me and Sam won’t be anywhere near the cameras and you are not to mention our names under any circumstance, all right? All I want is for people to start wondering what’s going on in that hospital. Let’s put it out there, and let somebody else start poking around. We don’t need that kind of exposure. Like it or not, you’re gonna be the face of this thing. You ready, Doc?”

  Dr. Menard rubbed his face. “I don’t know. I guess so.” “That’s the spirit.” Ed grinned. “Fuck it. You’re gonna be a hero. Go on Oprah.”

  “Maybe she’ll give you a car,” Sam said.

  Ed rapped on the table. “That’s it then. We’re gonna get your story out in front of the public, and damned if we’re aren’t gonna bring justice to the mean streets of Chicago.”

  “Hell, that’s our job description,” Sam said.

  Ed’s phone rang. He checked the number. It was Arturo.

  Across the restaurant, the cook yelled, “Holy shit, turn that TV up.”

  CHAPTER 52

  9:09 AM

  August 14

  Kimmy awoke to pounding. At first, she wasn’t sure what was making the noise. She realized it must be Lee. He’d left his phone when he stormed out last night, and he must have left his keys as well. She just hoped he had burned off the anger.

  She wanted to slip into some lingerie, coax him back into bed, see if she couldn’t improve his mood, but she didn’t want to risk enraging him further if she made him wait. She threw on a silk robe instead, deciding that she could always make him coffee and then change. She closed Grace’s door as s
he passed, and hurried to the front door.

  It was Phil. “I need to talk to Lee. Immediately.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Then where the fuck is he? He won’t answer his phone.”

  Kimmy shrugged. “He took off last night. I think he broke his phone before he left, so he didn’t take it.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He eyed her suspiciously. “You sure he’s not here? You’re not covering for his dumb ass, are you?” He pushed past roughly past her and banged on the walls with his fist. “Lee! Lee! You better not be hiding, you stupid sonofabitch.” He poked his head in the master bedroom, even checked the bathroom. On the way back, he opened Grace’s door, stuck his head inside.

  He circled the living room, squinting at the brilliant sunlight sizzling through the floor to ceiling windows. He whirled on Kimmy in the kitchen. “Goddamnit, I’ve been up all fucking night, trying to save his career.”

  Kimmy crossed her arms. She didn’t like the way he looked at her. “I told you. I don’t know where he is. He left without saying anything.”

  Phil ran a shaking hand through his wild hair. “Make me some coffee. I need to sit and think a minute.” He dragged a chair back from the dining table and collapsed into it.

  Grace appeared, rubbing her eyes. “Mommy, can I watch TV?”

  Kimmy shook her head and muttered, “Goddamnit.” She threw Phil a furious look, then turned to her daughter. “Go back to bed. No TV. Not now.”

  “But Mommy,” Grace whined.

  Kimmy smacked her on the butt. “I said get back into your bed. Now!”

  Grace started to cry.

  “Go! Now!”