by Kage Baker
“Whoa, Papi, where are you going?”
“They got Steinberg,” he said somberly.
“I’m sorry, Papi. Come on back upstairs. Was that a friend of yours?”
He didn’t say anything on the ride up in the elevator. Maria hefted the batteries, trying to draw his attention to them. “Look! Lots of lights for the Virgin. She can a have a fresh one every day.”
He just nodded, shuffling along beside her as they went down the hall to his room. There she opened the case and showed him how to put a new battery into the mini Mag. He didn’t speak, and as Maria looked closely to see whether he was paying attention, she realized he wasn’t wearing his upper plate. Her gaze went at once to the top of the dresser, where she’d left it between his Bible and his water glass. They were still there, but the upper plate wasn’t.
“Papi, what did you do with your plate?” she demanded..
He just shrugged.
“Papi, did it break again?”
He peered up at the dresser. “One of those damn Jap nurses must have stole it,” he muttered.
“Papi, that’s an awful, awful word, okay? It’s not right to call Japanese people that anymore. And anyway, most of the housekeepers here are Filipinas, and anyway why the hell would somebody steal your busted upper plate?”
He sat silent, offended. She groaned and got down on her hands and knees to peer under the dresser, under his chair, under his bed. She moved the dresser a few inches out from the wall and peered down its back. Not a trace of pink and ivory plastic to be seen.
“Punks steal from me all the time,” Hector said. “Took my crossword book, too.”
“I’ll have to talk to Mrs. Avila about it,” said Maria, climbing to her feet with effort. “The nutritionist, too. You have to be able to eat, Papi.”
“Get your uncle on the case, huh?” said Hector, who had wandered to the window and was looking out.
“Papi—” Maria bit back her retort, took a deep breath. She went to the window and kissed his cheek. “I have to go, Papi. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He began to cry, holding her hands.
“I love you, honey…”
“I love you, too, Papi. Look, tomorrow I’ll bring you some takeout. We’ll have a picnic in here, okay?”
“Okay…”
She had worked herself into the necessary righteous wrath by the time she got to Mrs. Avila’s office, but Mrs. Avila was on the phone, with her door closed, and in the time it took before Maria saw her hanging up the emotional momentum had fallen off. She rapped on the window politely. Mrs. Avila put her head in her hands, leaning her elbows on her desk, and didn’t seem to hear.
“Mrs. Avila?” Maria opened the door halfway. “Um—my father had his upper plate out, and it seems to have disappeared from his room. I was wondering if you—”
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Avila looked up at her with such a strange expression that Maria took a step backward.
“Is something wrong?”
Mrs. Avila blinked rapidly. “We just lost a long-term resident. We were all very fond of Mr. Steinberg. I’m sorry, you had a complaint?”
“Just that—ah—my father seems to have misplaced his upper plate. Is there any chance I can talk to the nutritionist about getting him on the soft diet, until I can get him new teeth?”
“I’ll make a note of it,” said Mrs. Avila, twisting her hands together. “Unfortunately, Mrs. Ng went home ill today, but I’ll see that she calls you to discuss this at the earliest opportunity.”
“Okay, thank you,” said Maria, and exited hastily.
She dreamed that night that a tightrope had been stretched from the roof of the Evergreen Care Home to the roof of another tall building across the gulf of the freeway. Hector and the other residents were lined up patiently on the roof, waiting their turns. Each ancient had been issued a brightly-colored parasol. The ones who had ventured out on the tightrope already were falling, gently as autumn leaves, down toward the roaring river of traffic, and the traffic was all hearses and ambulances.
She was trying, desperately, to get into the elevator to get up to the roof, to pull Hector back; but the Cat in the Hat kept hitting buttons that sent the elevator to the basement instead, smiling at her, insufferably pleased with his cleverness. Finally she leaped into the elevator anyway, trying to work it from the inside, but it dropped with her. The door opened on the basement, and there by the laundry chute stood Uncle Porfirio, gun in hand. Natty three-piece suit, Aztec cheekbones, mandarin beard and mustache. He looked at her without expression. His eyes were black as night.
It took Maria three trips to three separate drive-through restaurants and a visit to a drugstore to get what she wanted, so it was a little past her customary time the next evening when she pulled up in front of the Evergreen Care Home. The sky had flamed up orange and pink, and birds were crying from the tops of the trees. Trudging up to the lobby with an assortment of greasy paper bags, she glanced down curiously at the police tape festooned across the walkway.
“Did something happen here today?” she inquired of one of the housekeepers, as they ascended in the elevator.
“One of the residents reported somebody jumping off the roof,” the housekeeper replied.
Maria shuddered, remembering her dream. “You mean there was a suicide?”
The housekeeper shrugged. “We called the cops, but they couldn’t find anything in the bushes.”
The door opened on Hector’s floor and Maria hurried to him, fearful of finding his room empty, the window open on a void of glaring air. But no: he was seated placidly in his chair, listening to one of his tapes of Big Band music.
“Hey, you figured out how to work the tape player!” Maria greeted him, leaning down for a kiss. “Good for you.”
“He fixed it for me,” said Hector, jerking his thumb at the boombox. “Just push the red button, he said.”
“What?” Maria peered at it. Someone had affixed a bright red adhesive dot to the PLAY button on the tape machine. “Oh. That’s clever. Who’s he, Papi?”
Hector’s smile went away, came back, and he looked sidelong at her.
“Social worker,” he said. He looked with interest at the greasy bags. “We gonna eat?”
Pushing the mystery to the back of her mind, Maria opened the bags and set up the little feast: mashed potatoes and gravy from KFC, hot dogs from the Hot Dog Show, a chocolate malt from Foster’s Freeze. She cut the hot dogs into manageable pieces, stuck a plastic spoon in the potatoes, and presented it to Hector on a TV tray.
“Mm, good! See, it’s all stuff you can manage with your plate out. Just in case they screw up downstairs and serve you the wrong meal. And I got this, too—” Maria pulled two cans from her purse. “It’s like a vitamin shake. If you get hungry between meals, you just open one. I’ll put them up here by the Blessed Mother so you don’t forget, okay?”
“Mmhm,” Hector replied, through a mouthful of hot dog.
She brought out her own hot dogs and soda, and they dined together companionably.
“I saw your mother today,” said Hector.
Maria halted, soda halfway to her mouth. “Papi…Mama’s in Heaven, remember?”
“I know that,” he replied, indignant. “It was on TV.”
“Oh! You mean, one of her movies? Omigod, which one?”
“The one with the spaceships.” Hector strained for his malt, unable to reach it. She got up and handed it to him.
“Aztec Robots from Mars? No kidding! Maybe they’ll finally put that out on tape, huh? Then I’ll buy you a VCR, so you can see her whenever you want.”
But Hector was blinking back tears.
“I miss your mother…”
“Oh, Papi, don’t cry,” said Maria hurriedly, kissing his cheek. “One of these days Mama’s going to come for you in a pink Cadillac, okay? And you’ll live happily ever after, up with the angels. You just have to hang on until then.”
As she was wadding up paper bags for the trash
basket afterward, Maria noticed the gauze pad taped to his inner arm.
“What happened to your arm, Papi?”
“Lab work,” Hector replied.
“What kind of lab work? What for?”
“Don’t know,” said Hector, waving a hand. “Doctor came and did it.”
“They’re supposed to tell me if you need to go to the clinic. Did you have to be taken to the clinic?” Maria narrowed her eyes.
“Nope,” said Hector. “Doctor made a house call.”
“House call?” Maria was baffled. “And what’s this I hear about somebody jumping off the roof?”
“There was a big fight up there,” said Hector, nodding.
“A fight?”
“Yeah.” Hector’s smile vanished again. He looked uneasy. “I mean, I don’t know.”
She tried to see Mrs. Avila to ask her about what kind of lab work Hector had required, but the office door was closed and the blinds were drawn. Fuming, Maria drove home, deciding to call on her lunch hour tomorrow.
When she walked through the door of her apartment, the first thing she noticed was that Hector’s upper plate was sitting beside her answering machine.
The second thing she noticed was the slip of paper under the plate.
Standing perfectly motionless, she thought: Wow, it really does feel like ice water along your spine. She looked right, at the closet door; she looked left, at the door to her bedroom. Ahead of her was the kitchen doorway. Her gun was in the bedroom.
Quietly as she could, she withdrew a can of Mace from her purse and advanced. No masked killer burst from closet, bedroom, or kitchen, and so she was able to get to the phone table. She read the note under the plate, being careful not to touch anything, and called the police. Then she withdrew to her bedroom and sat, shaking.
The note read simply: WE CAN TOUCH YOU.
The cops were interested in her love life to an excessive degree.
“You’re sure this wouldn’t be an ex-boyfriend?” the younger one wanted to know.
“Yes, I’m sure,” Maria snapped, because it was the third time she had been asked that question.
“No ex-husbands?” asked the older one.
“None.”
“Well, why would anybody leave a note like this?” The younger cop hefted the plastic bag and peered through it at the note, stashed in there with the plate for fingerprinting.
“Because somebody’s a total psycho and has decided to terrorize a complete stranger?” said Maria. “That happens, doesn’t it?”
“So, you’ve got, like, no—uh—nephews or brothers who might be in gangs?” the older cop inquired.
“No brothers. One grand-nephew, ten months old. Gosh, maybe he’s in a gang,” said Maria. “I should have thought of that before, huh?”
“Anybody in your family ever assaulted?”
“My father, two years ago, when he lived with me,” Maria admitted. “He’s nearly eighty. He used to open the door to anybody, during the day when I was at work. I came home and found he’d been beaten up and robbed. He’s in a care facility now.”
“Anybody in your family ever murdered?”
“Only my uncle who was a cop,” Maria replied. “Shot five times and beaten to death. He worked Vice Squad. You can look him up: Lieutenant Porfirio Aguilar, 1956.”
There was a silence, and a perceptible change in the temperature of the room. The older cop cleared his throat.
“Well. You should probably get your locks changed. And, uh, go and stay with somebody until you get that taken care of, okay? And you can call me if anything else happens.” He took a card from his wallet and gave it to her. “Do you have anyplace else to stay?”
The house was dark, though it was only eight-thirty. Maria climbed the porch steps with her overnight bag, heart hammering. On the porch, closed in by ivy and hibiscus, it was nearly pitch-black.
“Tina?” she called, pounding on the door. No answer.
She found her old key and opened the door; reached in to the right and flipped the switch that turned on the porch light, and instantly stood in a pool of yellow illumination from the cobwebbed glass globe above her head. The door was open about six inches, and through its gap she could make out toys scattered on the carpet, surreal, fearful-looking in the gloom. She groped farther inward, trying to find the interior light switch, and heard something dragging itself toward the door.
“Jesus,” she murmured. She froze there with her arm halfway into the room, as the rattling came nearer; then mastered herself and pushed the door open.
The light from the porch fell on Philip’s little upturned face. He rolled himself to the door in his walker and peered up at her.
“Honey bunny, what’s going on?” she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. She picked him up—he was soaking wet, stinky, how long since he’d been changed?—and turned on the overhead light, bracing herself for what she’d see.
Not so horrible as it might have been. Sufficient unto the day are the horrors thereof, she thought numbly.
Tina on the couch, passed out. Two empty wine bottles, an empty glass, an ashtray, a plastic Baggie with a little pot in it, a box of kitchen matches and a book of rolling papers. Philip’s toys all over the floor, along with what looked like the contents of the kitchen trash basket.
“Jesus,” Maria repeated. Leaving Tina where she lay, she took the pot and flushed it down the toilet. Then she went through the house with Philip, turning on lights in every room. He watched her in solemn silence.
She gave Philip a bath, fed him, put him into jammies and fixed him a bottle; then retreated with him to Hector’s armchair, and sang quietly to him. It took a while to get him to sleep. He kept sitting up to stare across at his mother, black eyes wide and worried.
“Mommy’s just depressed again, sweetheart,” Maria said quietly. “I wonder what did it this time?”
He nestled back down, took his bottle, and fell asleep at last.
Maria looked across the room and time and saw herself on that couch at twenty-three, with a bottle of gin and a bottle of Seven-Up and a big glass of ice, getting drunk fast, furious with the world, as Hector sat in the other room staring at Lupe’s empty bed. And little Tina had sat next to her and watched, with black eyes wide and worried.
I could tell her I’m this close to calling Child Protective Services; but she’d only try to commit suicide again. I could actually call Child Protective Services; they’d take Philip away to foster care, where somebody would molest him, and then she really would check out. I could call Philip’s daddy and tell him to take custody; I’m sure his wife would love being presented with Philip, especially when she’s just had her own baby. I could call Isabel…and she’d move to New Zealand.
“What am I going to do, mi hijo?” she wondered. “Please, God, somebody, tell me.”
She was late for work the next morning. Tina had been weepy, apologetic, resentful, and finally indignant when she discovered that her stash had been disposed of. Maria had countered by telling her about the stalker. While this had been enough of a shock to abruptly change Bad Tina to Good Tina, it had also terrified her, and Maria had to spend a half-hour calming her down.
There was no point in explaining any of this to Yvette, the new departmental supervisor. Yvette lived in a world where such things didn’t happen. Maria simply apologized for oversleeping and offered to work through her lunch hour.
On her afternoon break, however, she called Mrs. Avila’s office.
She got a recorded message informing her that the switchboard was temporarily unavailable due to the high volume of incoming calls, and she could leave a message after the tone. Wondering grumpily how that many people could be calling the Evergreen residents, most of whom never heard from their kids except at holidays, she left a message for Mrs. Avila.
Two hours later, as she was on the phone explaining rate increases to a client, Yvette appeared at the doorway to her cubicle. She bore a message scrawled on a yellow legal pad
: EMERGENCY CALL IN MY OFFICE.
Maria knocked over a chair in her haste to get to Yvette’s desk, relaxing only momentarily when she heard Mrs. Avila’s voice on the line, rather than the police.
“Ms. Aguilar? I’m afraid I have some bad news.” Mrs. Avila’s voice was trembling. “We’ve had to admit your father to County General.”
It never rains but it pours, Maria thought. “Has he had a stroke?”
“No,” said Mrs. Avila, and it sounded as though she was drawing a deep breath. “He has—ah—a virus.”
“What? He was fine yesterday!”
“This is—” Mrs. Avila’s voice broke. “This is some new thing. We’ve had several cases. He’s in the ICU, and I don’t know if you’ll be able to get in to see him—”
By the time Maria had explained to Yvette, fought traffic all the way downtown to County General, found a parking space and bullied her way upstairs, Hector was dead.
“What do you mean, I can’t see him?” she asked the floor nurse, but the presence of men in hazmat suits going in and out of the Intensive Care Unit answered her question. She fought her way to the window and stared through. All she could see was a confused tentage of plastic, tubes, pipes, one skinny little mottled arm hanging down. Hector looked like an abandoned construction site.
The doctor, whose name she didn’t catch, explained that Hector had died from a rapidly-progressing pneumonic infection, just as all the others had, but because he had fought it off longer, there was some hope that—
“Longer?” Maria said. “What do you mean, all the others? How long were you treating him for this? He had no immune system, you know that?”
“He was brought in this morning,” said the doctor.
“But—he said a doctor came and did some kind of lab work on him yesterday. There was a bandage on his arm,” Maria protested. “He said the doctor made a house call.”
The doctor looked at her in silence a moment.
“Really,” he said. “That’s interesting.”
Maria was numb, going back down in the elevator, wandering past the gurneys full of moaning people parked in the hallways, threading her way between the cars in the parking lot. It wasn’t until she got to the Buick and opened her purse for her keys that she saw the Papi kit, and the reality sank in: My father is dead.
