by Lisa Unger
“What do you think?” asked Claudia, her back to the outside. “Do you think it’s too much work for you? Do you think it’s too much work, period?”
“No,” he said. “It’ll take time. I’ll have to bring in some folks to help with plumbing and electricity. The basement is going to be a big project. But I think I can manage most things.”
She turned to look at him, her smile cautious. She had a way of glancing at him with her face turned, peering over her glasses. She was pretty, like his mom had been. Lovely with creamy, soft skin. Even the tiny wrinkles at the edges of her eyes were pretty. She smelled like peppermint.
“So what’s your rate?”
Rhett was already giving him a hard time about the business. Josh still charged close to what his father used to charge. Rhett wanted Josh to gouge her: “She’s a rich city girl. In Manhattan she’d pay four times what you’re charging. More.”
“I charge $350 dollars a day, for all work,” he said. That’s what he’d always charged folks. It was fair. “Plus materials. Other service professionals I bring in will have their own fee in addition to mine.”
She nodded, bit the bottom of her lip. “That sounds fair. Are you insured?”
“Yes,” he lied. “Bonded and insured.”
Insurance cost a fortune, and he couldn’t afford it. Maybe if you charged more than Dad was charging in the eighties you’d be able to afford to do things right. It was just like Rhett to be gone for five years, in prison no less, and then show up like he owned the place and knew everything.
He watched Rhett come out of the barn empty-handed and get back into the car, lying down in the backseat. Claudia caught Josh looking outside and turned to see what he was looking at—a split second after the car door closed. She turned back to look at him.
“The cop who came out said it looked as if it had been pried off,” she said.
She thought he had been looking at the fallen door. She’d wrapped her arms around her middle and was toeing a peeling corner of linoleum tile. Her dainty foot was bare.
He laughed a little. “I doubt it,” he said. “That thing was ready to fall. And there’s nothing in there, is there?”
“Just some rusted old tools.”
The dark creep of suspicion distracted him from the prettiness of her manicured toes. Had he told Rhett about the barn door? Had his brother come out here last night? There was nothing Rhett wasn’t willing to do to get what he wanted.
She ran a hand through her cloud of blonde curls. “Can I get you some coffee? I just made it.”
“Sure,” he said. “That would be great. Thanks.”
She had light, quick movements. He tried not to stare at her full bottom, or how he could just see the lace of her bra peeking out from the tank top she wore under a blue-and-white checked shirt. She moved off to get the coffee, and he stared at the barn.
• • •
THAT NIGHT, SO LONG AGO, the car had been overwarm and Josh knew, he knew he shouldn’t be there. He had been sound asleep in his own bed when his brother snuck into his room and shook him awake. There was no way not to go with him. You just didn’t say no to Rhett.
You kind of didn’t want to say no; that was the first thing. There was something about his older brother that made Josh want to please, want to feel the glow of his approval. And you were afraid of what he’d do to you if he didn’t get what he wanted. Nipple twists and friction burns, choke holds and arm bending, small but painful acts of coercion. Then taunts. Aw, you little pussy, stop crying.
“Where are we going?” Josh asked.
“Are we babysitters?” said a man Josh had never met. In addition to Rhett and Josh, there were two more men in the car, one driving, the other to Josh’s left. The man beside him never said a word. Both men wore ski masks; Rhett, riding shotgun, held one in his hand, and had handed one to Josh. It was scratchy beneath his fingers. “Why’d you bring the kid?”
“We need a third man inside,” said Rhett. “Anyway, he’s not a kid. He’s just skinny. He’s nearly twenty.”
That was a lie.
Maybe I’m dreaming, Josh kept thinking.
The smell of cigarette smoke radiated off the man beside Josh, acrid and foul. He was big, taking up a lot of space, and spreading his legs wide. Their thighs were close together; Josh thought that his looked like a baseball bat next to a fallen log. The stranger stared out the window, chewing vigorously on the corner of his thumbnail. Rhett, up front, pumped his leg the way he did when he was nervous or angry.
“What are we doing?” Josh said again.
“Shut up,” Rhett hissed.
The waxing gibbous moon had dipped behind the clouds, no streetlamps lit the rural road. So outside it was just black. They turned off onto an unpaved drive, a wall of trees on either side. The driver turned off the headlights, and they drifted in what seemed to Josh to be total darkness. Finally a house, lit only by a light at the porch, came into view. They stopped a good distance, killing the engine, and sat silent.
“Where are we?”
Rhett reached back to knock him on the head, and Josh decided not to ask any more questions, rubbing at the spot. How long were they going to sit there? No one said anything.
Josh was pretty sure that he was the only one who saw her, a thin girl and her dog cutting across the side yard and disappearing into the trees.
What was she doing? Where was she going? He looked up at Rhett, but his brother was just staring off at nothing, his face twisted in a scowl.
He didn’t say a word, the pain on the side of his head still smarting. After a time—how long?—the man in the driver’s seat said, “Let’s go.”
• • •
“SO,” CLAUDIA SAID NOW, HANDING him a cup. “When can you start?”
“How’s Monday?”
She offered a slow bob of her head, her expression uncertain. He looked around at the mess she’d made of the wallpaper.
“Leave that,” he said, pointing. “I’ll take care of it.”
She released a breath, relief or defeat, he couldn’t say. Maybe both.
“Okay,” she said. “Monday.”
On his way back to the car, Josh leaned in close to inspect the hinges of the barn door. It did look as though someone had used a crowbar. He ran his fingers over the ridges and looked inside the large dim space. The gun locker he remembered was gone. The window had been covered with thick plastic and sealed with duct tape. There was a rusting old lawn mower, some boxes, a rickety bike. He stepped inside. That night was still with him. He still dreamed about it sometimes.
When Josh climbed back in the car, Rhett was on his back, arms folded across his chest as though he were lying in a coffin. He often slept in that position, too. Josh sat a second, staring at the barn door.
“Find anything?” asked Josh. He already knew the answer.
“Not shit.”
“I told you,” said Josh, backing up the drive and swinging the vehicle around. “I’ve been through this place a hundred times. Other people sneak out here, too, you know. Someone would have found something.”
“It’s in there,” said Rhett. He had the stubbornness of the unintelligent. If he thought the world was flat, he’d kill you before he’d let you convince him otherwise.
“It was never there,” said Josh. “He set you up. Someone wanted that cop dead. They used us.”
He’d had a lot of time to think about it, turn over and over what they’d done, why, how it had turned out. Josh watched in the rearview mirror as Rhett shook his head, thinking.
“In fact, maybe it never existed in the first place,” said Josh. “Ever think of that?”
“Shut up,” said Rhett. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Rhett never gave up on the idea of that money. It was his holy grail, the thing that was going to make every wrong thing right. Even from lockup, he’d call collect with ideas.
Maybe it was inside the walls; look for a seam in the drywall.
What about the attic?
For a long time, the Bishop house was empty. So Josh could just go over there and look around. Over the years, he’d inspected every square inch, never once thinking he’d find it. He knew that night that the money wasn’t there. He could hear it in the cop’s voice. The cop would have given it up to save his family. You’re making a mistake, he’d said, desperation making his voice quaver. What you’re looking for? It’s not here. Let my family go.
“I’ve been all through that house, all over the property, in that barn.”
“Yeah,” said Rhett. “But you’re a fucking moron. And you’re lazy. You give up. Remember when we were kids, we’d play hide and seek? You’d just wind up crying or telling Mom that you couldn’t find me. You could never find me.”
God, thought Josh. He is such an idiot. It was true, though; he never could find Rhett when they played hide and seek. But maybe it was really because he didn’t want to find Rhett. He’d usually just wind up using the time to get to the Nintendo and play by himself for a while.
“I’ll believe it’s not there when I’ve gone through that house,” said Rhett.
Josh didn’t say anything.
“While you’re in there working,” Rhett went on. “I’ll be in there looking. This is a perfect opportunity. It’s like the universe wants us to find that money.”
Josh felt that familiar tingle of unease he always had around his brother. He was a bully; he’d get what he wanted, no matter what he had to do to you to get it.
“She thinks I work alone.” Josh didn’t want Rhett around Claudia, or her daughter. Josh didn’t know them, but he knew what his brother would see when he looked at them.
“Tell her there’s too much work,” said Rhett. “You need another man. And jack up the price. Three-fifty a day? That’s bullshit.”
“With a lunch break, that’s fifty dollars an hour. That’s fair.”
Rhett blew out a breath of disdain. “Tell her five hundred a day with a second man and the work will get done faster. Tell her she’ll actually be saving money. You got to learn how to work people, little brother.”
Josh wasn’t going to do any such thing. But he nodded. How was he going to get out of this? He could already feel the poison of Rhett leaking into the air of his life.
“Didion is dead,” said Josh. “Do you know that?”
Josh pulled onto the main road, hung a right toward town. The weight of his words was heavy in the air, expanding. “Someone broke into his apartment and killed him.”
“How do you know that?” Rhett asked. He sat up and climbed awkwardly into the front seat, knocking Josh in the head, causing him to swerve a little. Christ.
“The old man called,” said Josh.
“Called you?”
Josh didn’t say anything.
“When were you going to tell me this?” Rhett asked.
“I’m telling you now.”
“When did he call?”
“The night you came home,” Josh said. He didn’t want to turn and look at Rhett, those staring eyes turned Josh into a puddle, made him feel like he was a little kid. “He called you, too, right? That’s why you’re here. It’s not a coincidence.”
“No one knows it was us that night,” said Rhett, apropos of nothing, like he was having a whole different conversation in his head. There was a ragged edge to his voice. “We got away with it.”
“Did we?” asked Josh. “We killed a cop and his wife. Left the girl for dead, except she wasn’t dead. All for a pile of cash that wasn’t there. You went to prison for something else. I’m still here working in Dad’s shop. You’re still looking for money that never existed. What did we get away with, exactly?”
“The money’s there,” said Rhett, not listening. “We just have to find it. We have to get into that house and tear it apart. When we find it, everything we’ve been through will be worth it.”
A flutter of fear laced with anger moved up Josh’s throat from his belly.
“Didion was killed with a hunting knife,” said Josh.
“So?” asked Rhett, his expression blank.
Did he not remember that night? What they did to the woman and the girl? Did it mean so little to him, did he not hear their screams at night, like Josh sometimes did?
“So—I think we have a bigger problem than money that may never have existed.”
Still nothing. “What’s that?”
Josh pulled the car over onto the shoulder and turned to look at his brother. Rhett had a raggedness to him, now that Josh was really looking at him—time behind bars, booze and drugs and cigarettes and bad food taking their toll in his pasty complexion, the deep wrinkles around his eyes. There was a strange glistening to his stare, something like desperation residing in the corners.
“We didn’t get away with anything,” said Josh. He’d have to spell it out. “Someone knows.”
Josh expected to see the dawning of fear, a realization that if in fact the universe wanted something for them, it wasn’t a big payday. Josh’s father was right. You don’t get away with a thing like that. It hunts you down, one way or another.
Instead, a kind of steely resolve hardened his brother’s face.
“Well, then, we don’t have any time to lose, do we?” he said.
thirteen
Lately, I have been thinking about how I want to die. I don’t want to slip away, a ghostlike figure disappearing into the mist between trees. I don’t want normal, the things that other people seem to want. I don’t want to fall in love with someone, get married, have children. I don’t want to watch them grow, go away to college, get married, too. I don’t want to then watch my grandchildren grow, then maybe watch my husband die, until something starts to gnaw at my insides, slowly taking me away bit by bit. I don’t want to die like Paul will die, fighting for every last breath, every day an agony of the disconnect between his agile mind and his failing body.
I want to fall from a great height after leaping from buildings, watching, breathing all the way down until the concrete rises up to greet me, smashing my bones. Or having rushed into a burning building to save a crying baby, I want to go up in flames. Or get torn apart by bullets in a gunfight. I want it to be big, loud. I want to leave a mess when I depart this world, leave a stain that can’t be washed away.
That’s what I was thinking about when my phone buzzed on the bedside table, announcing a text. I grabbed it quickly, worried that it was Paul, needing me—not that he was one to text. Instead, it was Nate Shelby.
How’s the new kitten?
You’re a man of action.
Always.
Tiger and Milo are fast friends.
Good call.
I waited, watching the gray buttons pulse, sensing there was more to come.
Then:
So what’s your story?
What’s my story? How should I respond to that? I wondered. I shouldn’t. I should just let the text slip into the oblivion of the unanswered. Maybe he’d get the hint that I didn’t exist. Instead, I found my thumbs moving.
No story. I’m just the cat sitter.
Somehow, I’m not buying it.
I didn’t write anything back, and neither did he. I stared at the canvas that hung on the wall across his bed, an angry swirl of red and black, bold strokes thick on the canvas. What’s your story, Nate Shelby?
• • •
AFTER A COUPLE HOURS OF my particular brand of unsleep, I rose and dressed, headed to Paul’s. The morning air was cool, the sun a yellow ball, as I made my way up Broadway toward the East Village. It was just after seven, and the streets and coffee shops were already packed, traffic already heavy on Broadway. But once I turned at Eighth and crossed Third, it grew quieter. The East Village sleeps in, always, like Truman Capote said, has the aura of desertion.
Inside the foyer with the eternal black-and-white tile floor of all old New York buildings, I retrieved Paul’s mail. Then I hoofed it up the stairs, hearing blow dryers and television sh
ows, someone laughing—sounds wisping through doors like smoke. At the doorstep, I paused and looked down at his copy of the Daily News. He should have retrieved it by now. My heart gave a little pump as I pushed inside. I expected to find him in the kitchen. He’s an early riser and always gets up and gets dressed, retrieves the paper, and makes himself a cup of coffee. Always. But the kitchen is empty, the apartment quiet.
“Paul,” I say, walking down the hallway toward his room.
The nurse, Betsy, would have left last night at ten. They would have called if something were wrong then, if he’d seemed off or needed a treatment.
“Paul.”
I paused with my hand on the doorknob and knocked. When there was no answer, I pushed inside. He was on the floor, halfway between the door and the bed, still in the sweatpants and tee-shirt that pass for pajamas. I dropped to my knees and leaned in close to hear the rasping of his breath. He reached for me and gripped my wrist.
“Zoey,” he said.
“Don’t talk,” I said, grabbing the phone in my pocket and dialing 911. When the dispatcher picked up, I asked for an ambulance, gave Paul’s address.
“Please,” he said. “Be careful.”
His eyes stared into the middle distance, and his breath was coming in painful rasps.
“It’s okay,” I said. “They’re coming.”
I called the super, Mr. Rodriquez, and told him to wait for the EMTs to arrive and let them in downstairs. I knew I’d left the apartment door ajar. I grabbed a blanket from Paul’s bed and covered him. I lifted his head onto my thigh and held his hand, listening to his breathing, rocking, tears streaming down my face.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered. “Don’t leave me here.”
The milky light washed in from the window beside his bed, the minutes pulling and yawning, his breathing, his hand in mine, time standing still until I heard the clamor of feet on the stairs in the hallway.
The past mingles with the present, another day, another moment watching people I love suffer.
