Husk

by Dave Zeltserman

  It wasn’t until nearly eleven o’clock that I saw Chris for the first time that day. He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at me as if he resented the fact that I was working for him. Otherwise, he didn’t acknowledge me, which I preferred, since it gave me an excuse not to acknowledge him in return.

  ‘Both restroom floors need mopping,’ he said after a minute of his silent glaring. ‘Scrub the toilets also. If you haven’t had your first fifteen-minute break yet, take it before eleven thirty or you’ll lose it. And don’t go out there with those bags on your feet.’

  Just as I didn’t like the way that cook looked at me, I also didn’t like being bossed around in such a condescending manner by one of them. But what I discovered that morning was that I much preferred work – any kind, even washing dishes and scrubbing pots – to not having work. Without uttering a complaint, I removed the plastic bags from my boots (Eduardo had been right about them, I needed them to keep my boots from getting drenched) and got the mop and other cleaning supplies from the closet and cleaned the bathrooms as directed.

  The rest of the day went pretty much the same. I stopped glancing back every time I felt that cook glaring angrily at me, but I knew he was doing it. I also decided it didn’t matter, and mostly ignored it. Around eleven thirty, work picked up again and didn’t slow down until two thirty. This gave me a chance to finish the pots and pans that had piled up, and empty and clean the trash cans. At four o’clock I untied my apron and left it on the hook where I’d found it. As I left the restaurant, Chris glanced at his watch and then gave me a look I knew all too well from the elders – the type of look that meant he was trying to think of something to complain about but couldn’t. I left the restaurant before he was able to come up with something.

  The smell of grease and cooked animal flesh stayed with me once I was outside. It must’ve gotten on my skin and into my hair. I bunched up my shirt and sniffed it. Even though I’d worn an apron, the smell had saturated my shirt, and probably my pants too. Jill had mentioned yesterday that I needed to buy more clothing, and I could fully see the need for it now. Given how important it was for me to find the thick-jawed man I spotted in Brooklyn, I was going to have to live with that smell on me for now, and just keep breathing in through my mouth to avoid it.

  I stopped off at a market and bought a newspaper and several pieces of fruit and a Vidalia onion, which the clerk told me was sweeter and tastier than other types of onion. I sat for a spell on the sidewalk so I could peel the onion, then I ate it and the fruit as I walked to the nearest subway station.

  Given how long it had taken to travel to East Flatbush, I wasn’t going to have much time for my searching since I had arranged to meet Jill at seven that evening, but whatever I could fit in I would. Knowing how much more intensely I was feeling the cravings, I had to find that thick-jawed man soon.

  I read through the newspaper as I waited for the subway car and while I rode on it, and found stories about both men I had killed, although they added nothing new to what I had seen on the television news last night. There appeared to be a lot of outrage over the killing of the police officer, but from what I could gather no witnesses had yet come forward and the police were unable to offer any reason for the killing. As far as the well-fed orange-haired man was concerned, the police were still trying to identify the round-faced bearded man in the photograph, and it sounded as if they were convinced this wrongly accused man was the killer. They didn’t show any other photographs, and I felt a momentary anxiety that a photo might still surface with me in it. Not that I was worried anymore about the possibility that that girl might have witnessed me striking the well-fed man, or that the police might start believing I was the killer. But I was worried that Jill might see the photograph and I would have to explain why I was in it.

  It took me longer than it did yesterday to get to the Kingston Avenue subway station, which left me only an hour for my searching if I was going to get back to Jill on time. I visited more streets and marked them off on my map, but had no better luck than I previously had. However, I did find a store that sold rubber shoes and bought a pair. And I also found something called a thrift shop that offered used clothing. I bought three more shirts, two more pairs of pants, and three pairs of wool socks, and for once the cost was less than I expected.

  TWENTY

  For the next two days I fell into a routine, which began with preparing a meal for myself and Jill before leaving for work. Other than a short exchange of greetings with Eduardo, who’d seemed genuinely surprised when I showed up twenty minutes early as promised, I’d do my work quietly until four o’clock without speaking to anyone other than Chris, who barked orders at me a few times each day, and afterwards I’d search the East Flatbush neighborhood without any luck.

  When I made the early morning meal for Jill and myself, I didn’t expect her to join me. I knew it was early for her and planned to simply have her meal waiting for her. But she insisted on joining me, saying that it gave her a chance to see me since she now had less available time due to getting busier with school and work. Each morning she kissed me passionately before we parted, which made me even more determined to find the thick-jawed man who I was convinced could tell me the secret of keeping the cravings at bay.

  Wednesday night Jill had school and work commitments until nine-thirty, which gave me more time to search, fruitlessly, for my quarry. When Jill and I met that night, we walked around her neighborhood together, her hand quickly slipping into mine. Later, when we returned to her apartment, she played more of her favorite Mozart music, and leaned against me on the couch while she read one of her psychology books and I engaged myself with one of her novels. It was soothing feeling her body next to mine, and feeling her soft, rhythmic breathing. The cravings were getting worse each day, but when I was with Jill I noticed them less.

  Later, when Jill went to bed, I turned the television set on low so I could watch the news. I learned that they had found the round-faced bearded man, in Vermont. The police were convinced that he had murdered the well-fed man, but his lawyer stated that they would fight having him brought to New York. The district attorney spoke to the news reporters, saying their case against this man was a strong one and they expected to have him indicted in a New York court soon. No other photographs were shown, and I was beginning to believe no others existed. That night the news report gave only a short mention of the police officer I’d killed, and that was only regarding his funeral.

  Thursday night I met Jill back at her apartment at nine o’clock, as we had arranged, and her friend Brittany was there also. The two of them were planning to go to a bar for drinks, and Jill wanted me to join them.

  ‘It will give you two a chance to sort of start over and get to know each other better.’

  ‘Hey, we were fine before,’ Brittany insisted, as she gave me the kind of look a bobcat might give a slow-moving bird. ‘Best buds already. Right, Charlie?’

  I felt the cravings gnawing deeper into my skull as I nodded in false agreement.

  Jill gave her friend a wary look, but didn’t argue the matter. ‘Some of us have to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow. We won’t stay out past eleven. Right, Brit?’

  Brittany rolled her eyes. ‘Right, mom.’

  I joined them only because Jill had asked me to. I certainly didn’t want to spend any time with her friend Brittany, especially given how much worse the cravings had gotten. Although it had been less than a week since I’d last had one of my clan’s meat stews, I was surprised by how much deeper the cravings had worked their way into me. In my mind’s eye, I imagined the cravings like little worms burrowing into my bones and muscles, and trying to eat their way toward my brain. I had hoped work would calm these thoughts, but it did little to help. All day I had been looking forward to spending time alone with Jill, hoping that her presence would allow me to forget about the cravings, if only for a few minutes. But as Brittany drove us to the bar she wanted to go to, I knew that her aggressive personali
ty would cancel out whatever benefit Jill’s presence might have provided in helping me to temporarily forget the cravings.

  The bar Brittany took us to was a dark, cavernous place, located in a basement and aptly named A Hole in the Wall. Instead of sitting at a table, as Jill and I had done at the restaurants we’d gone to, Jill and I sat together on a small sagging couch while Brittany sat in an armchair opposite us, close enough that her knees nearly touched mine. Wine was the only fermented beverage I’d had, but I’d read about scotch and knew it was more potent, so I ordered myself one hoping its effects would lessen the cravings. When the waitress asked me what kind I wanted, I told her something that didn’t cost too much, and Brittany let out a short burst of her braying laugher.

  ‘Give the man a twelve year-old Macallan.’ She winked at me. ‘My treat.’

  I didn’t argue about her paying for me. With the way the cravings were weighing on me, I didn’t feel up to matching wits with anyone, especially this Brittany girl.

  ‘How would you like it?’ the waitress asked me.

  I wasn’t quite sure what she was asking. I was about to say that I’d like the scotch in a glass, but Brittany answered for me, telling the waitress, ‘Neat.’ I had no idea what that meant, but it seemed to satisfy the waitress, who moved on to talk to a group of them sitting nearby on two sofas that kitty-cornered each other.

  While we waited for the waitress to return with our beverages, Brittany said, ‘Jill told me you’re working already. So where are you building houses?’

  ‘I’m not doing that yet. For now I’m doing other work.’

  ‘Oh?’ She opened her eyes wide as if this was a surprise to her, but I was sure it wasn’t. ‘What job did you take?’

  Jill said, ‘Brit, it’s not important. What’s important is the initiative Charlie showed in getting a job while he’s waiting for a home-building position.’

  ‘Jill, darling, I’m just asking your friend an innocent question. Why so defensive? Charlie’s not doing something incredibly embarrassing like scrubbing toilets or washing dishes, is he?’

  She smiled in an innocent sort of manner that convinced me her comment was anything but innocent. Earlier, when I returned to Jill’s apartment I had still been wearing the rubber shoes that I now wore for work and clothes that smelled heavily of grease and cooked meat, and hadn’t yet switched to my work boots or changed into the cleaner clothing I now had on. I remembered the way she smirked when she glanced at my rubber shoes. Maybe she reasoned from them that I was working as a dishwasher. Or she could’ve figured it out from smelling the stench from my work clothes, or she may have been spying on me. Whichever it was, I had little doubt that she knew the type of work I was doing, and her comment was meant to belittle me.

  ‘I’m working as a dishwasher,’ I said. ‘And I’m not ashamed of it. It’s honest work. It’s not as if I’m studying a profession that will allow me to rob people blind, such as being a lawyer.’

  I had only a vague notion of what lawyers did from my readings, but in one of the novels I had read a line about lawyers robbing people blind, and I thought my comment might strike to the heart of the matter. And it did, given the way Jill laughed for the briefest of moments and then squeezed my arm. Brittany reacted by her smile dulling a bit while her eyes sparkled with malice.

  ‘Touché, Charlie. Though I’m planning to be a prosecutor, not a defense or corporate lawyer, so I won’t be quite the bloodsucker. But I can have a big mouth at times and, as Jill has told me on numerous occasions, I do sometimes suffer from verbal diarrhea. Still, it was a completely innocent, although obviously dumb, comment on my part. I’m sorry for insulting you.’

  ‘You didn’t insult me. The person you insulted in this bar is right now standing in the back of the kitchen, performing diligent work for little money so you can drink out of a clean glass.’

  ‘Touché again,’ she said, her smile tightening even further. She turned to address Jill. ‘I like your Charlie. He can give as good as he takes.’

  The waitress returned with our drinks. Jill and Brittany had ordered concoctions that were a mystery to me, their names having never appeared in any of my readings. I sipped my scotch in the same manner I saw Brittany and Jill sip their drinks, and felt the heat of it on my lips and throat. I took several more sips and decided I liked its sweet and at the same time smoky flavor. As we sat there sipping our drinks, Brittany started peppering me with questions which seemed harmless regarding how I liked New York, though I had an idea she was really laying a trap for me. After six of these questions, Jill steered the conversation in other directions, mostly regarding common friends of theirs and how Brittany was finding her third year of law school. Somehow the conversation ended up with the police officer I had killed (although, of course, that’s not how they referred to him) and how it had happened at a lake which Jill and her friend had been to a dozen times in the past to walk. Out of the blue, Brittany asked me if I had been to the lake the night the killing happened.

  ‘What?’ Jill demanded, her voice strained by either anger or surprise, her body suddenly tensing.

  ‘What do you mean by “what”? I asked Charlie an innocent question. After all, you told me he likes to go hiking around Queens late at night. Maybe he was out that night and ended up near Lake Kissena. And maybe he even saw something that could help the police. That’s all I was asking.’

  ‘Yeah, right. You know, Brit, you’re being a world-class jerk right now.’ Jill was quickly on her feet and fumbling blindly through the small leather bag she carried. She pulled out a $20 bill and flung it on to the small table next to the couch. ‘Come on, Charlie,’ she said, her face bright with emotion. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  I gulped down the rest of my scotch, because I liked the way it was dulling the cravings, and stood to join her. Brittany was imploring Jill to sit down again. ‘Jesus, Jill, lighten up! I was only joking around and giving Charlie a little bit of a hard time. He was fine with it. You’re the one acting like you got a stick way up your butt.’

  Her words had little impact on Jill other than making her move even faster as she determinedly strode out of the bar. She’s a little thing with legs far shorter than my own, but I had to walk at a fast clip to keep pace with her. She led me a block away from the bar before she started slowing down.

  ‘Sometimes she just goes too far,’ Jill muttered angrily, her face flushed. ‘But she had no right joking around about something like that.’

  ‘Your friend was only curious about whether I might’ve seen something. After all, I did roam about your neighborhood that night. It was just luck on my part that I didn’t go in the direction of that lake.’

  Jill shook her head as she seethed. ‘That’s not at all what she was implying. But never mind. She owes both of us apologies. You more than me.’ She breathed air deeply into her lungs, and then let it out slowly in an effort to calm herself. When she was done emptying her lungs, she breathed in deeply again and then offered me a brittle smile.

  ‘If Brittany wants to act like that, screw her, I don’t care. So Charlie, we’re about five miles from my apartment. Since I’m not about to go back there and ask Brittany for a ride, we can either walk it or I can call for an Uber. It’s not a bad night for walking. Which would you prefer?’

  It wasn’t hard to tell that not only did Jill prefer the idea of walking, but that she needed to so she could release some of the pent-up anger she was feeling toward her friend. I therefore told her I’d prefer to walk. It was an usually warm night, the warmest since I’d been in New York, but the heat didn’t slow her down, at least not for the next ten blocks as she raced ahead. Not only was it uncomfortably warm, but also more humid than the other nights, and since I was used to the drier, cooler nights offered by the New Hampshire wilderness, I soon found myself perspiring as I tried to match Jill’s stride. After those ten blocks, she slowed down to a more reasonable pace and her hand once again searched out mine. For the rest of our walk, she was qui
eter than she usually was, and even though we held hands it was almost as if she were alone. When we returned to her apartment, she informed me that she was tired and was going to bed. She kissed me before she did so, but it was different from our other kisses. It was as if she was preoccupied and wasn’t really thinking of me. After she disappeared into her bedroom, I turned on the television set so that I could watch the news, and afterwards settled down to read one of Jill’s novels in the murky grayness of the room.

  Given the way the cravings were once again gnawing at me (whatever reprieve the scotch had provided was short-lived) and that I’d picked up an overall uneasiness from Jill, I didn’t expect to be able to sleep that night, at least not cooped up inside the apartment. I was tempted to do more roaming outside and maybe head west to Lake Meadow, the lake that I’d lied to Jill about going to the night I killed the police officer. The prospect of lying on grass by water was appealing, and I thought I might be able to sleep if I did that. But I knew that if Jill found her living room empty she might be suspicious about it, and possibly even give more credence to her friend Brittany’s suspicions. It was also possible the police had reasoned that the person who killed their fellow officer was someone who’d been sleeping beside the lake when the officer encountered him, and they could be searching for others sleeping beside lakes as possible suspects. For these reasons, I resolved to ignore the temptation to head outside, as strong as it was, and instead keep myself occupied by reading, in the hope that I might find myself a few moments of respite from the cravings.