It's Called Disturbing

by Buddy Roy Baldry

  It was an accident. He welded this to his conscience. And while he was able to nearly convince himself, the weld marks were clearly visible. Even if Tom were able to absolve himself, others may not reach the same conclusion. Then, which version of the truth was stronger? Had he really done this thing? Had he killed a man? Him. Tom Ryder. Little Tommy Ryder who in the third grade still sucked his thumb. Little Tommy Titsucker, they called him. Which made him cry out of frustration. Not at being called a name, but from not understanding the link between the thumb and the tit. He sucked his fucking thumb, he thought (it still puzzled him, now) so why Tommy Tit-Sucker? Why not Tommy Thumb-Sucker...

  “Tom?”

  “Tit-Sucker!” Tom spat.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Tom realized there was someone addressing him. He went cold as though he were in his living room, watching TV and looked up through the living room window only to see someone standing there, staring at him. The man placed himself in the stool next to Tom. “Hello,” the man said.

  “Hi.” Tom tried to look the good-looking officer in the eyes, yet his own felt so heavy and his neck did not feel strong enough to hold his head up, the grain of the bar so aesthetically appealing. “How are you?” he managed.

  “How are you?” the big man said back to him. Not in a condescending way, but in a conspirator’s tone. Comrades in something.

  “I’m OK,” Tom croaked.

  “I have seen better days, too. I have seen worse, mind you.” He smiled at Tom. His hair was black from beneath his hat. Black leather jacket and dress pants replaced the RCMP uniform. If this was casual dress for the officer it had the opposite effect on Tom. Tom felt anything but casual. All he could see were gleaming teeth floating above a black swaying balloon. The smile floated to face an approaching waitress. “I’ll have a Kokanee and...” He pointed to Tom.

  The waitress said proudly and quickly, “Quadrupled rum and Pepsi, tequila side and a Bud.” She turned away with the satisfaction of having remembered such an order and pinned it on Tom as though the empty glasses in front of him were not evidence enough.

  “Been here long?” the man said as the waitress lay their order before them.

  “Not long,” Tom lied. He sipped at his drink and felt his lips burn. The good-looking officer contemplated the label of his beer. “Thanks for the drink,” Tom added quickly, wondering if should have said drinks.

  “No problem.” When the officer drank, Tom drank. Then lapsed into speculation whether the officer was subliminally making him drink, thereby easing him into doing and saying whatever the officer wanted to hear. He forced himself to drink at three, six, and eight-second respective intervals between the officer’s drinks. Which dawned on him was even more clever of the bastard.

  “I know why you’re here,” the good-looking officer said. He was looking at himself in the mirrors behind the bar. Squinting his eyes a little, and glancing quickly up out of the corner of his eye at his profile.

  “You do?”

  “I was on highway patrol and we used to get these accident scenes...” he spread his arms to show a loss of words. He kept speaking, rendering his body language a lie. “I’ve been around. I’ve seen a lot of weird ones,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “Sure. There was this one case where we had a body, obviously asphyxiated, but on what? Or by whom? Nothing in the autopsy, except that he drank some water before he died. Well, we analyzed the water and sure enough, it contained enough of his esophagus DNA for us to confirm that he had choked on an ice cube.”

  “Holy shit!” Tom said. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as esophagus DNA.”

  “There might not be,” the officer said. “Can you imagine dying like that?”

  Tom could not imagine. It would be awful. What would you do when realizing you were choking on an ice cube? Would you run to the toaster and stick your mouth over it? Run hot water down your throat? Or boiling water? Would you lose consciousness just after you had the capacity to think: “Why won’t that fucking thing melt?”

  “So these things sort of haunt you, and you look for every little thing to help. You had a client die recently, right? Your client is probably haunting you.”

  Tom thought of his client haunting him. He thought of ghosts. Rattling chains and gangly skeletons. Joe’s skeleton calling to him at night from the apartment above his. He thought of headless mannequins hanging from their necks.

  “My point is, you tend to watch for things out of the ordinary. And sometimes they end up being so ordinary that you miss them. Like your name coming up while investigating this thing. Coincidence, I know, but I just go there every time, you know?” He smiled.

  “I suppose,” Tom said.

  “Of corpse you do.”

  “What?” Tom jolted his head up, suddenly sober. Did he just say corpse?

  “I said of course you do.” The smile. “It’s hard when someone dies suddenly, someone that you work with. You are drinking here tonight because you feel guilty.”

  “Guilty?”

  “What? No, I didn’t say guilty, I said pity. For the family.”

  “Yes, of corpse,” Tom said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Of course.”

  After a pause, the officer said, “It’s funny though, how we keep running into each other. Go fugitive.”

  Go fugitive? That was a slip for go figure. A slip for sure, but not an obvious one. Not even a popular saying; why not go fish?

  “And in my line of work it’s good to keep close to people who knew the deceased, even a little bit. I’m glad you and I are able to talk.” The good-looking officer smiled.

  “I understand,” Tom said and sucked at an ice cube from his glass. He spit it out, alarmed at the hazards. “I’m not much of a conversationalist tonight, though.”

  “It’s been that kind of night. You don’t have to talk. I respect that right to solitude.”

  Tom felt sweat on the back of his neck. Did he just say you have the right to remain silent? Tom felt the insane drunken urge to run. To smash all the glasses on the counter as a diversion and then bolt out the door. Or hammer the officer over the head with a bar stool. Yet, what if he was misreading the situation? Was he just being paranoid? What if, after nailing the officer with the barstool, the man just stood there, hurt but not in the physical sense and, instead of arresting Tom, said: “what did you do that for?”

  The officer gulped the rest of his beer and slid a business card in front of Tom. “If you think of anything you might remember, give me a con.”

  Or: “Give me a call.”

  “I will,” Tom said. “Thanks again for the drink.”

  “No parole,” the officer said.

  No problem? Tom looked up. The officer was looking into Tom’s eyes with a confusing mixture of humour and threat. “You heard me that time.” He left with a smile and Tom the bill.

  $$$

  After a few more drinks, there he was in the parking lot, fumbling with keys and then checking his wallet and cell phone. There he was pulling out of the pub with the windshield wipers on and the radio too fucking loud. Which to shut off first? And then peace after driving over the curb. Lights flowing over him were like seconds marking the passage of time before he was home. He took each off-ramp instinctively. As though he were in a river. Passing cars in and out like a fish struggling upstream. A salmon ready to spawn. He felt his member move thinking of Eddy waiting in bed. He would crawl in beside her warmth. He would pretend his fingers were tiny vehicles rolling over the hills of her thighs or shoulders. Speed bumps in certain streets became her ribs in his fantasy, making him go slow. Tracing his fingers down into her midsection, to her second set of ribs. She was so open then, so exposed and helpless. She would look into his eyes and he could really and truly see her face. And when he thought of crawling into her tonight, he imagined her sleepy face looking over at him in the dark. When did she start wearing glasses? And then, suddenly, no glasses. It was like a dif
ferent chick, his member nudged him.

  At home, there was the warmth of the lamp above the couch and the room was silent. In the dark kitchen he stumbled on boxes of cereal from the cupboards. He slipped on the cottage cheese and low-fat sour cream he liked on his potatoes. When he sat he was eye level with a neatly piled tower of weight loss milkshake boxes. Attached like a white flag of surrender was a note which read: “I am leaving you. You are an unsupportive fuck.” Then he remembered. She was gone. He hadn’t even bothered to remove her good-bye note.

  Their closet confirmed it. Where her morose clothes used to cling to wire hangers, there was an empty space leaving, oddly, the exact amount of space for Tom’s wardrobe. So he stood there, like he knew he should, waiting for the feeling of rage or betrayal. What crossed his mind instantly was the cottage cheese. He thought she threw that out.

  Chapter 14

  “Come on, come on.” Tom whispered into the receiver. His hands fidgeted and twitched all over his desk, to the calendar, to his computer, picking at the fuzz on the armrests of his chair. Finally, he heard her voice on the other end.

  “Rebecca speaking, how may I assist you?”

  “Rebecca?” He hissed into the phone. Would she instinctively sense his panic, his consternation, would she clue in quickly without needing a lot of explaining? Of course she would. They were soulmates.

  “Yes, hello? How may I assist you?”

  “It’s Tom. Tom Ryder,” He said and exhaled with relief.

  “Tom Ryder? I don’t have anything on my desk regarding you. What is the problem?” Her voice was cool. She knows something is wrong. She is concerned, Tom thought. Some people did not know how to show concern and it scared them.

  “Our plan, Rebecca,” Tom said quickly. “Something went wrong. Something seriously went wrong.”

  “Our plan?” She sounded more distant and frightened with each passing sentence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about Tom. Mr. Ryder. What plan?”

  “Good, good,” Tom said, looking around his office in a state of sudden paranoia. “They could be listening. What was I thinking?”

  Before he could add anything more he heard a roar from outside his door. There was a crash and slamming of doors. Another roar. Definitely coming from the foyer. “Holy shit, something weird is going on here, Rebecca. I’ll call you tonight.”

  “Call me tonight? What the hell...”

  “I have your number,” Tom said. He stood up with the phone halfway to its cradle.

  “You do not!” He heard her voice become tiny, “And I want to clear something up right now...” He hung up. See? It’s all clear, don’t worry he thought. We’ll get through this.

  He opened his door and stepped tentatively into the hall. There was some sort of commotion happening at the receptionist’s desk. Tom followed the noise down the hall and stood at the corner near the water cooler. The receptionist was hiding her head in her thick hands and Wally and the recruiting manager looked as though they were squaring off in the center of the room, each man’s bulk nearly taking up the whole of the foyer.

  “Wally, listen to me, we’ll get it straightened out,” the recruiter was saying.

  Wally’s face was flush, and his massive chest was moving up and down hysterically. His wild bulging eyes wandered the room and rested on Tom. Tom felt his scrotum tighten. “They me$$ed up our pay!” Wally shouted at him. Pay? Tom thought quickly. Did he even have any pay coming? “Our pay!” Wally shouted at Tom again when he obviously did not get the response he was after. How should Tom respond? Indignant, perhaps. Outrage? They said they would straighten it out, though. Tom did not dare to reply. “My money!” Wally roared anew, and the recruiter flinched.

  “Wally. Walter. Listen to me. There was a mistake...”

  “Goddamn right there wa$!”

  “The new commission structures have a few bugs, that’s all. It will get straightened out before the end of the day, I am sure of it,” the recruiter was saying, but his pleas fell on deaf, dumb and blind ears. Wally paced around the office, the receptionist letting out a small squeak whenever he passed close to her. He lashed out with one hand and hit the wall, a large framed picture with the word SUCCESS and inspirational sayings fell to the floor, the glass shattering. Tom heard a few office doors open and close just as quickly. It seemed most people in the office knew what was happening and chose wisely to stay away. Tom was not one of them.

  “Thi$ will get $traightened out now, $am. No one me$$es with my $$$.”

  “Wally, just relax...”

  “You relax, I $$$ my $$$. You think $$$ can $$$ $$$$$$$$ $$?”

  “Wally!”

  “$$$$ $$$, $$$$ $$$ $ $$$$$ $$$ $!”

  “Take it easy, Wally.” The recruiter now looked worried, not scared. Tom looked at Wally. The man’s face was extremely red, now, unnaturally red. He was sweating openly; it ran in rivulets down the folds of his face and chest. His shirt was now soaked through.

  “$$$ $$$$ $$$$$ $$$$$. $$$$? $$$$? $$$!” Wally said and then stumbled back and held on to the receptionist’s desk to support himself. The receptionist gave out a final scream and leaped toward the exit, leaving her shawl and coffee where they sat. “$$$ $$$.” Wally puffed. He reeled from the desk and swayed in the center of the room for a second, looking like he was going to explode, covering the walls with Wally. Then in an instant his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he pitched forward, slamming the waiting room magazine table into the floor, pages of insurance propaganda floating all around his head.

  “Oh, my God!” the recruiter said, throwing himself on his star producer. “Tom, call 911.”

  “The police?” Tom hesitated.

  “Ambulance, Tom! 911! Hurry!”

  “$$$,” Wally gurgled.

  Tom found the receptionist’s phone and desperately tried to think of the number for 911. It was listed on an information sheet taped to her computer. He punched it frantically while watching Wally’s face. The man had been so torn up about his paycheck he had a heart attack, or something. Could Tom be that tore up about anything? Another failure on his part. That much passion looked so painful. Wally’s thick eyelids were flickering up and down. If he died, Tom thought morbidly, the man would insist on loonies, not pennies, for his eyelids. And those heavy lids would clutch those dollars for eternity.

  Chapter 15

  Tom decided to tell his Uncle in person about Wally’s heart attack but when he approached the pneumatic doors of the store nothing happened. He stamped on the mat under his feet, thinking the sensors were losing their contacts. He waved his arms at what he thought was the sensor at the top of the door. Still nothing. He could see shoppers inside and there were cars in the lot, so he knew the store was open. Using his hands, he pried the doors apart and, as though they needed the priming of Tom’s fingers, they finally slid open sluggishly. Tom stepped inside and two things struck him immediately: One, there was no greeter at the entrance whom at one time had been omnipresent. Two, the mat beneath his feet, and indeed the whole of the floor throughout the store was soaking wet. There was not enough water to slosh around in, but enough traces for Tom to tell that there once had been. Recently, too.

  Tom approached the first face he recognized, a teller ringing through groceries for a sullen faced woman. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello.” The cashier looked at him without emotion, but Tom saw the way she was ringing through the food items that something was the matter; her hands were shaking badly.

  “I`m looking for my Uncle,” he said.

  “He’s here in the store somewhere,” she said. “$125.32,” she told the customer, and Tom moved away. Stock boys were mopping the aisles and moving foodstuffs from the bottom shelves to higher locations. There were not as many customers as usual, but those there were pushing carts across slippery floors, once gleaming, now dull and wet. On his way to his Uncle’s office he found Jude.

  “Hi, it’s me Tom, remember?”

  “Who?” she said, glancing at
the stock boys with their mops who were in turn glancing at her, she had obviously been giving strict orders on how to deal with whatever it was they were dealing with and they did not want to deviate from her plan. “Oh, Thomas,” she said, “Isn’t it horrible?”

  “What happened?” Tom asked.

  “The sprinkler system malfunctioned,” she said.

  “It did?” Tom asked.

  “No!” she screeched, and held her head. “Oh my God, it’s terrible.”

  Tom left her clutching her head in grief. Halfway down the first aisle he heard her regain some sort of composure and begin yelling at the staff again, directing the maneuvering of their mop work. He climbed the stairs to his Uncle’s office and entered without knocking. After all, the gatekeeper was occupied. “Uncle?” he called into the dark room. He felt around for the light switches but gave up when he heard a pathetic and low moan coming from the corner. “Uncle? Is that you?”

  “The sprinklers,” the grieving voice said.

  “The store is kind of a mess,” Tom said, feeling along the wall until his hip ran against a desk. He paused, listening.

  “A mess?” the voice said and then cackled maniacally. “Yes, it is a mess, isn’t it? A terrible mess. HAHAHA.” The laughter seemed to echo in the dark office and Tom felt hairs on his arms respond appropriately.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fuck you,” his Uncle spat. It was his Uncle, Tom knew. He had seen his Uncle spit that way.

  Tom came to the edge of the desk and looked over. “What happened?”

  There was an elongated sigh and then, “The sprinkler system went off last night. About 2:30 am. I got the call from the security company and I came right down.”

  “You’ve been here since yesterday morning?” Tom said.

  “Yes! What the hell would you do.” Emphasis on you. “Oh, it’s Tom, I forgot.” Another half insane chuckle. “Forget it.”