Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6)

by Gerald Hansen

  “Erm, back to me,” Gretchen wanted to say, but she felt bad about it. Were her problems the worst in the world? To her, yes, but she couldn't expect everyone to see that.

  So they continued talking about the cashier who needed to be fired, and when they finally went to bed, Gretchen realized Roz was right. She had to confront Darko, and see if she might somehow be allowed to quit without fear of retribution.

  After the phone call to her parents, on her way to the office, once she had kept firmly in her mind that the strange and startling figures on the sidelines of her sight were only her curls, she still kept imagining she was being followed, shadowed, kept feeling the eyes of every homeless person she passed were lighting up with a special gleam as she passed, a copy of the photo Darko had taken of her hidden in their grimy sleeping bags. She had brought her check book with her. Her cash was low, but if need be, she would write checks for $30, post-dated ones, and she would pass them out to every grubby, filthy outstretched paw she came upon, after stressing to them they had to wait until the date on the check to approach a bank. She would play Darko at his own game. He would pay New York's homeless $20 to kill her, she would pay them $30 to let her live.

  With a sense of impending doom, she had plodded down the hallway, teeth and hand clenched, towards the door with the gold plaque, the door with the streams of cigarette smoke billowing from under it.

  “Akkx! You not deliver?” Darko now said.

  “Don't be angry—”

  “No, I know. Iskra call me yesterday. I, how you say, bail out her. Stupid woman. Silly woman. What she do in that store? What bad thing? Idiot woman. She deserve.”

  Pot calling kettle black, Gretchen mused, her eyes still on the package.

  “But, Darko...”

  He picked up the package and seemed to be cradling it. She thought him deranged for a moment, and she felt a shiver down her spine.

  “Darko, what about you? What illegal things are you doing? 'Illegal' means 'bad.' What bad things are you getting me involved in? Perhaps it's new vocabulary to you, but you have turned me into a, a, it's called an accessory.”

  His face beamed.

  “I know word. Ring, diamond, necklace, headband even.”

  “Yes, but no. An accessory to crime. You have made me a criminal.”

  He was struggling with this concept, criminal jewelry, but Gretchen plowed on.

  “Your entire set up here. What exactly do you export and import? What is it? Drugs? Guns? Are you also involved in prostitution? Illegal gambling? Organ harvesting? Before, I didn't wonder about what your company did, I didn't care. I was happy to teach you English, I was grateful for the money, but I've become uncomfortable ever since I've had to deliver these packages.”

  His face fell.

  “You not want teach? You not teach good, but you try. I not care. You try. I learn.”

  “Darko, this is not about the English lessons now. It's about you running some sort of...illegal operation here,” his face crinkled uncomprehendingly here, and she knew he was thinking of hospitals and doctors and wondering what sort of operation she thought he was running to, “and, more importantly, you threatening me. Threatening that you will have a homeless man kill me for $20 if I quit. You have me so scared of every homeless person I pass. I think they will all kill me, smash my skull with a rock or a bottle or I don't know what.”

  “Akkx!” He was angry and insulted in equal measures. For a moment. He put down the package. He looked hurt. He moved further away from her, down the length of his desk. He couldn't look her in the eye. He was struggling to find the words to speak. Then he found them. He looked at her as if she were a madwoman.

  “In my land, yes. In this land, no. In my land, can pay politzia. I can kill enemy, everyone can kill enemy, polizia with money look other way. But here, cannot pay politzia. I know. I try. Many times. You crazy?”

  Perhaps she was.

  “Politzia here get to know, they send back me my land. I not want send back me my land. I want here. And enemy I kill in Svardia bad man. I kill killer. I kill pedo. You not killer? You not pedo? You not enemy. Iskra stupid. Iskra live in beautiful country. USA. The Iskra do bad thing. Politzia take Iskra. I pay, bail out her, but I already say Iskra deserve. I not buy lawyer for Iskra. Svardia bad. No food. No ice cube. No AC. USA good. USA food, ice cube, AC. I want USA. I not Iskra. I not do bad thing.”

  Her heart went out to him all at once. Now she understood. He was more afraid of the authorities than Americans were. Afraid of deportation. Darko Trajko would do anything, even following the rules, which she suspected was against his nature, for a life in the USA. Speaking English. But it didn't answer the question, the questions.

  “But then...what is in these packages? What is your business?”

  He looked at her sadly.

  “You think I bad man.”

  Well, he apparently had been a murderer in his country, but a good one, an avenger, a vigilante ridding the villages—she imagined villages and women tilling fields with scythes, babushkas on their heads—ridding the villages of murderers and pedophiles and God alone knew what other types of criminals. But Gretchen was seeing a kinder, softer Darko. A Darko with a heart.

  “I not bad man. I show you.”

  Darko ripped the paper from the package. Gretchen held her breath, her eyes uncertain whether to stay wide open or clamped shut. He pulled a pink and black striped box from the wreckage of paper. There was a yellow bow around it.

  Gretchen knew pink, black and yellow were the colors of the Svardian flag. She had researched the county on Wikipedia: capital city: Wschlxvð; population, 3,875,000; physical characteristics, land-locked, hills and valleys; exports, grains and ore; currency, drashka ($1 US = 250,000 SD); religion, 33% Christian, 33% Eastern Orthodox, 33% Muslim.

  Darko untied the bow and opened the box. Gretchen peered inside, tense.

  THE NEXT DAY, AFTER their second date (an early dinner followed by an evening at the auto show), David took Gretchen to see his mother. When he first brought it up, Gretchen was gripped with panic. How could she exchange pleasantries with the mother of the man she had had sex with in a parking lot? And it was a strange thing to do after two dates, no matter that the second date seemed like two dates in one, and no matter how quickly you thought you were falling in love with somebody. And especially in New York, where nobody's parents seemed to live. Special visits had to be arranged with either the parents coming to the city, or a visit arranged, maybe on Nickel and Dime airlines, to visit Ohio or Idaho or wherever the child had originally come from before relocating to the glamour of the big city.

  Gretchen didn't really meet her, in any event; she really just saw her. Mrs. Roth was in no state to meet anyone.

  Gretchen was falling fast and suspected David was feeling the same. Throughout their dates, she had noticed him looking at her when he thought she wasn't looking. The week before, as she stared up, shirking and starting, at the kung-fu violence unfolding on the screen before them (he had apologized for the choice of movie afterward). As she stared down at the sizzling plate of fajitas that had just arrived before her on the table. As she stared into the interior of the next year's Ferrari, marveling at the sexiness of the steering wheel (he had also apologized for taking her there, but he had bought the tickets before they met. Gretchen didn't mind; she had quite enjoyed it). She had seen him past her curls, gazing at her out of the corner of her eye on all these occasions, and it was that look that is so hard to read, a pained look that could mean he wanted to smack her or sleep with her, true love or rough trade.

  David Lee Roth was a deep man, and Gretchen loved that about him. She supposed it went with his occupation. He always seemed to be turning things over in his mind, at times unable to answer a simple question she had asked him, and not because he didn't know the answer. Because he hadn't heard her; he'd been thinking of something else. Usually a medical procedure booked for the next day, he explained. She also saw confusion, as if he were mulling
some big decision over and over in his mind. She wondered if he were weighing the pros and cons of one type of anesthesia against the other for whatever operation was going to happen the next time he went to the hospital.

  At dinner that evening, over his cappuccino and her chamomile tea, while they were waiting for their dessert of flan, as it was the only thing on the menu under Desserts, Gretchen told David about Darko and the packages. (After they had had sex in the parking lot outside the hospital, she had revealed while they both rearranged their clothing and made themselves respectable, peering in the rear view mirror of the ambulance to arrange their hair, that Nickel and Dime had fired her and that she worked as an English teacher). When she got to the punch line, and she was laughing uproariously at her own suspicious mind, he was staring blankly at her across the bowl of tortilla chips, realizing that she had said something of importance.

  “What?” he said. “Sorry, Gretchen. It's so noisy in here, I couldn't hear. And, yeah, I've got to admit I was wondering about tomorrow's procedure as well. We've got that colonoscopy scheduled for eight.”

  The amount of colonoscopies they seemed to do at that hospital was shocking! It was about the only type of operation David seemed to perform. And it was noisy in the restaurant; both the table of twelve to their left and the table to their right were celebrating birthdays with, a glance at the tables through the balloons that hovered around them revealed, shot after shot of tequila washed down with frozen margaritas.

  “So I was telling you, thank you,” the flan had arrived, “Mmm! Looks delicious! Here, have some,” she spooned it into his mouth across the dregs of salsa, “He opens the package and, well, I couldn't believe it. It wasn't drugs or anything bad. It was an animal, carved out of wood and painted black, pink and yellow. Those are the colors of the Svardian flag.”

  “Just where is this Savdia?” David asked through a mouthful of flan.

  “Eastern Europe, I guess. And it looked like a, a, well, a boar or a warthog or a wildebeest or something. Some wild pig thing with tusks. Apparently it's the national animal of this Svardia. I felt sure it was packed with drugs. But he unscrewed the, er, hind quarters of it, and instead of drugs, instead of anything shocking or illegal, three little boars fell out. Three baby boars with tiny little tusks. Sooo cute, like those matroshka dolls from Russia. They're apparently big in the souvenir shops in Svardia. For whatever, I can only imagine few, tourists go there. And during these mysterious drop offs, there I was, terrified of being arrested, thinking I was being followed, and all the while, the packages were only gifts for friends of his who hadn't been home for a while. He really does have a heart of gold.”

  As so often in Gretchen's life, her view of someone, this time Darko Trajko, shifted. The Svardian businessman, now respectable and kind, had looked on in surprise the day before as she had burst into tears of relief in his office. Then she had taught him the difference between “I buy” and “I'm buying.”

  When Gretchen and David left the auto show and were debating going to the park or for another drink, her arm wrapped in his, her loving the feel of him close to her, pressing against her, David's phone pinged. He slipped it out of his pocket, then suddenly smacked his forehead with his hand.

  “My mother!” he said. “I clean forgot! I have to drop some medication off to her!”

  “Medication?”

  “Yes.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a Duane Reade bag. “She's...she's not been having a good time of it lately. Do you mind if we just swing by her place? It's not too far off.”

  “She must get her medication,” Gretchen said through a nervous smile. “Of course I don't mind. Where does she live?”

  “A Hundred and Third and Broadway.”

  How this was 'not too far off,' Gretchen couldn't imagine, as they were on 45th Street and 12th Avenue, but how could she say anything? The woman needed her medication!

  They took the subway up there, and as they were waiting on the platform for a subway, David did something strange. He leaned towards her and whispered to her, “You know what, Gretchen? I never thought this would happen, but I, I, I can't stop thinking about you. I think I'm really falling in love with you. Please remember that, whatever happens.”

  She was thrilled and confused in equal measures.

  “Whatever happens? What do you mean?”

  But then the train came, and when they got on, it was too crowded for such a private conversation. He kept squeezing her hand and wrapping his arms around her, though, and she realized they were clutching each other as if they were afraid the other might suddenly fly away. Her brain buzzed and her heart sang.

  While they were climbing the stairs of the subway, he sent a few texts on his phone, back and forth to the hospital, she imagined, then he nodded, slipped his phone in his pocket and said, “Okay, let's go.”

  They had to walk five blocks.

  “I hope you don't mind meeting my mother so soon,” he said. “It must be stressful. I realize that. You can wait outside, if you want. But the neighborhood's sort of dangerous. And, maybe, after, after, well, you know how we met, after that, maybe the last thing you want is to put yourself in a situation like that again. And I think, even the lobby of the building might be dangerous as well.”

  Gretchen was all too aware, seeing who they were passing, that he was right.

  “No, it's fine,” she said, clasping him tightly to her, loving how safe he made her feel, “I'm happy to meet her. A bit nervous, but I'll get over it.”

  He sent off another text, then they entered a building that looked set to be condemned. The elevator was broken, so they had to walk up seven flights of a stairwell bathed in the fragrance of old urine, passing vulgar graffiti and broken windows nobody had bothered to board up.

  “Your poor mother!” Gretchen panted, her legs weak as they reached the fifth floor, with two more yet to be climbed looming over their heads. “How does she ever get up to her apartment?”

  “She never leaves it,” David said. “Oh, I didn't say? She's bedridden.”

  “What's wrong with her?”

  “Plenty. Don't be too shocked when you see her. The only good thing is, you won't have any awkward conversation with her. She doesn't really speak. And one of the things she suffers from is Alzheimer's, so if she does speak, it might not make any sense.”

  Gretchen didn't want to pry any longer, but she felt bad that the Alzheimer's made her feel relieved. It wasn't, then, as if she would really be 'meeting' his mother.

  The paint on the door of 7D was peeling, the locks tarnished. David hauled out a fistful of keys, and seemed to have trouble figuring out which key belonged to which of the many locks that kept the dangers of the neighborhood at bay. Finally, the door opened. They stepped inside. It was a studio apartment, more a bedroom with a tiny kitchen attached. It seemed like nobody lived there, but there Mrs. Roth lay, languished, under a mountain of blankets and sheets on the bed before Gretchen, her skeletal arms hooked up to drips, one on each side of the bed and, Gretchen saw to her further shock and pity, electrodes attached to the sides of her temple, the invalid's shock of white hair garlanded by wires that led to a machine to the right of the bed, a machine that bleeped and buzzed with digital graphs and flashing lights. Gretchen's heart went out to the poor old woman.

  David was looking at the electrodes with almost equal alarm, but that alarm disappeared so quickly Gretchen wondered if she had seen it at all. Maybe his mother had taken a turn for the worse since he had last seen her?

  The woman was in a terrible state. She must've had David when she was older, much older, because Mrs. Roth looked to be in her early nineties. Or it might have been her illness and the medications they were giving her to keep her alive like that. Her pallid face was plowed with wrinkles, huge crevices that criss-crossed the flesh and made it seem more like a mask from a horror movie than a living being. Gretchen shivered. Was this to be her future? Would she one day look like this? Be in this state?
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br />   The room was empty of knickknacks, of anything personal, save an old photo on the one chipped dresser of a happy couple and their boy aged nine or ten. There was a Ferris wheel in the background, and the boy was clutching cotton candy. Gretchen guessed it was Mr. and Mrs. Roth, along with little David. A happy nuclear family at the county fair. An iPad sat beside the photo, the latest model. Gretchen was surprised. She thought it remarkable that a woman Mrs. Roth's age would know the ins and outs of technology, let alone be able to reach it, far away from the bed on the top of the dresser as it was. Gretchen struggled to deal with her own iPad. She was always turning it off accidentally, or things would disappear, never to be found again.

  The woman seemed to be asleep, and for that Gretchen was grateful. But the moment she thought this, Mrs. Roth's eyelids fluttered, and she moaned on the pillow and was awake.

  “Sissy?” the woman moaned. She peered at them with confusion, surprise and some fear. “Is that you?”

  “That's her caregiver,” David explained. “She comes by a few hours every day to help her out, feed her and things.”

  “Her name is Sissy?”

  David didn't seem to hear. He was fiddling with the pillows, making his mother's head comfortable on them.

  “Isn't she awfully alone here?” Gretchen whispered. “How does she eat?”

  “I visit her every day. Read to her.” Maybe that explained the iPad. “She doesn't eat much. The nutrients from,” he nodded at the bags of fluid that hung to either side of the bed, the catheters that led to the woman's wasted flesh, “those is all she needs.”

  “What a terrible state to live in!” She grimly forced her eyes towards the woman and smiled kindly over at her. “Mrs. Roth. What a pleasure to meet you! My name's Gretchen. You've got a fantastic son. You should be proud.”