“Sorry. Like is your motor dead?”
“Don’t think so. Ran out of gas.”
“Anywhere you can get a charge?”
“I’m stuck in the front of my driveway.”
“That sucks, dude. So sorry.”
“When’s Scott comin’ back from lunch?”
“No man. Scott’s not in town. He’s down in Cabo on vacation.”
“Anybody there can come up here and help me out?”
“Yeah, sure. Where are you?”
“Chatsworth?”
“Where’s that?”
“In the Valley.”
“Oh...” said Rodrigo. “Is that like, near Reseda?”
“North of that,” said Woody, leaking mental oil. “You got anybody who can come up and give me a jump?”
“Like Triple A? Hey, that’s funny.”
“I can assure you none of this shit is funny.”
“Only guy here who lives up in the Valley is Chuck. And he can’t cut out until five.”
It was nearly one in the afternoon. Waiting for four hours wasn’t Woody’s idea of getting help. He clicked off without saying goodbye to Rodrigo, then quickly reviewed his options. There was his cleaning crew, but they didn’t come but two days a week and Thursday wasn’t one of them. After that, Woody thought of the home-care practitioners who on occasion would handle some of the messier nursing chores that paraplegics needed done. But most of these practitioners were women and past middle-aged. Getting enough of them to give him a proper push would be impossible on short notice.
Lastly, Woody saw two options that were essentially one in the same. Around his neck he wore a thin, stainless-steel chain from which hung a red button. In case of emergency, he could push the button, triggering an automated 911 phone call from his home landline. Woody regarded the button and the distance between himself and his little house set deep on the half-acre lot. By his own estimation, there was no way a radio signal that was only supposed to work within his house could travel those hundred and fifty or so feet. That left dialing 911 from his cell phone, an act that would certainly do the trick. But at what kind of embarrassing cost? The conversation ran in his head.
“Nine-one-one operator.”
“Hullo. I’m a four-hundred-pound paraplegic in a three-hundred-pound custom moto-chair with five pounds of Mr. Gu’s going cold on my fucking lap.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. I ran out of power because, well, the power last night kinda went out. Not my fault, see. So could you please scramble a two-man fire crew or some EMTs to come push me up my driveway so I can plug back in and eat my lunch?”
“Is this an emergency?”
“Technically, no. At least not until my colostomy bag bursts from WAITING FOR SOMEBODY TO FUCKING HELP ME!!!”
The imaginary conversation was followed by a silence in Woody’s brain.
And suddenly, calling Triple A was sounding like less of a joke.
Then Woody heard a voice he didn’t recognize.
“You need some help?”
“Hey, yeah...” said Woody, straining his neck to see who was behind him.
“Broke down or did you just run out of juice for that thing?”
“No power,” said Woody. He twisted left and looked up toward the voice. Despite the fedora and Roy Orbison glasses, Woody still had to squint. The stranger was tall and wore paint-splattered overalls, a red Anaheim Angels baseball cap, and a pair of aviator-styled sunglasses. Other than that, the blast from the midday sun was too blinding for Woody to make out any of the man’s features.
“That where you wanna go?”
“That’s my house, yeah.”
“What if we run us an extension cord?”
“The chair takes two-twenty. Unless you got that kind of cable.”
“Two-twenty, wow. And no. I don’t. Suppose one man pushin’ won’t work either.”
“Unless you’re named Superman.”
“Sorry,” said the stranger, offering a hand. “Keith.”
“Keith?”
“Don’t wear it out,” joked the stranger, squatting and looking over the chair. “Can you steer it?”
Woody worked the joystick. The smaller, rear wheels turned slightly.
“Got a little somethin’ left,” said Woody.
Then came this moment of unnerving quiet. Woody, his neck in near spasm from trying to catch a clean look at the stranger, could feel the slightest vibrations through the chair, as if the stranger was running his hands along the sleek chassis.
“Really appreciate your help,” said Woody. “Whatcha thinking?”
“If the steering works, maybe a push. Got my ride over there. If I could get square behind you—just a touch, see—then with a little gas, you steer yourself up the drive.”
“Little push?” asked Woody, trying to suppress the nerves in his voice.
“Gentle kinda push,” said the stranger, his voice trailing. “Of course, that’s if you want a neighbor to give it a try.”
“I’m sorry,” said Woody. “But do I know you?”
“If it makes you uncomfortable, you can always call nine-one-one.”
Woody heard a car door pull shut behind him. It had a deeper kuh-shunk kind of sound. But sweet. More like a new pickup truck than a car. Next he heard the starter whine, followed by the distinctive, husky rumble of a diesel engine.
“Gonna come in easy behind ya,” shouted the stranger out the window of his truck. “Think it’s a good idea if you raise your hand when you feel the touch.”
Woody involuntarily raised an arm in worried acknowledgement. He squirmed, too. Then contorted to the right, trying like hell to get a better look at the help that was coming up from behind. At the very edge of his periphery where the corners of his eyes picked up little more than light and shadow, he saw what could have easily been mistaken for a white whale on wheels easing closer to his chair—the pickup truck’s grill like silvery jaws ready to bite. Woody tried to read the California license plate, but discovered the harder he cranked his neck the more his vision blurred.
The sound of that heavy-duty engine? Throaty. Ear-numbing. Each piston cycle pulsed against Woody’s skin. He felt the heat as the pickup edged closer. He smelled the residual, rich, unspent diesel.
Then came the first bump. Slightly more than a gentle shove, inching the chair up into the driveway, then releasing it back. At first, Woody wanted to steer. Then he suddenly recalled that he was supposed to signal with a raised arm. As he shot his left hand into the air, another bump came, this time a fair bit stronger, but hardly violent. Woody wiggled the joystick, but couldn’t hear the servos working over the rumbling of the truck’s engine. He could only hope he was steering, otherwise the pickup would roll him up into the untended tangle of rosebushes that edged the property.
“Y’okay?” barked the stranger behind the wheel.
“Okay...” squeaked Woody, the shout in him getting stuck in the back of his throat.
“A little harder now.”
“Okay...”
Woody heard the engine rev and this time he was ready for the touch. So when the pickup’s bumper made contact with the back of the chair, Woody was fully prepared to steer his dying machine, using the precious little battery power that was left.
It began like a roller coaster’s uphill climb. An unexpected reminder of Woody’s carefree times as a freewheeling, reckless adolescent. There was the first push of anticipation as the roller coaster’s cars began climbing the track. The click-click-clicking sound. Ahead, the peak. And beyond, nothing but sky. Then at last, the release. Followed by the gut-thumping drop, where everything inside a thirteen-year-old’s skin felt as if it was compressing into his brain.
Oh, the rapture.
Woody stretched his left arm high and gave the stranger an affirmative thumbs-up. Progress was a magical thing. Forward movement, a godsend. He was up the driveway’s incline at the sidewalk and creeping along the twenty-foot wide strip of chipped bric
k and concrete. Hell, thought Woody, the Good Samaritan had come along so swiftly the damn Chinese food parked on his oversized lap was still warm.
Woody was overcome by shadow as he rolled under the green boughs of the towering eucalyptus trees that stood like a row of hundred-foot-tall sentries down his property line. It was as if all the sunshine had been swallowed up, leaving his entire property shrouded in shade.
Ahead and to the left stood Woody’s house and flame-appointed van, parked on a slightly elevated pad of concrete that adjoined Woody’s front-stoop-turned-paraplegic’s-loading-dock. Directly in front of Woody was a flimsy old gate on metal casters that led to a detached garage full of junk and spiders. Above the garage doors was a cockeyed basketball hoop screwed to a plywood backboard where the remnants of a net hung from the last rusted loop.
Weird. Memories of youth were flooding into Woody’s conscious. Memories that might have brought a melancholy smile to Woody’s face were it not for the shove.
The shove actually, was closer to a jolt. So lost in his mental medley of 220-volt power cables and bare-chested boys playing backyard ball and the fragrance of shrimp fried rice, Woody hadn’t heard the pickup’s engine rev. All he felt was his four hundred pounds of flesh suddenly compressed deeper into his seat as his chair surged forward. Four feet per second suddenly became ten, then twenty-five...
Woody forgot all about the roller coasters. He even forgot about lunch. All Woody saw was the flimsy gate ahead, rushing at him like a barn door tossed by a tornado.
Sometime later he would only remember the strange silence. And the sense that he had actually been flying. The scenery tumbling, as if watching a video somebody had shot from a camera hidden inside a bowling ball. He heard the sound of his heart thumping at around two hundred beats per minute.
In the blackness that followed, he listened to his speeding heart fade until all sound appeared gone, extinguished in the crash. This was death, Woody thought. For in the faintest distance, he could hear his dead mother calling him inside to eat dinner.
7
“HOW MANY KIDS did you say you had?”
“I don’t,” said Ben plainly.
Pam looked puzzled.
“Weird,” she said. “Back there I was pretty sure you said you had kids.”
“I did have kids,” said Ben. “Sorry. Maybe it came out wrong.”
Pam stirred her soup, briefly looking past Ben at all the flavors of midday shoppers buzzing behind him. After showing Ben the house she had lingered for a bit, enjoying some friendly chatter with him. It softened her yen to readdress her Internet woes and her adoption obsession. She found herself craving the butternut squash soup served daily in the deli section of the neighborhood Gelson’s.
Ben, on the other hand, needed drops for his dry contact lenses. So after thanking Pam for the house tour, he had driven away, breathed an exhilarated sigh of relief, then swung into the nearest market for a quick stop before setting his heading east for his Burbank office.
Pam had spotted Ben in the twelve-items-or-less line.
Of course her first instinct was that nice Ben might not be so nice after all. That after saying goodbye he had hung back and followed her. Experience had taught her that when it came to her and men, there was no such thing as coincidence. It was a rule by which she lived.
But as she carefully observed him from her spot in the salad bar line, Ben appeared exactly as he had first presented himself. Totally benign. Still, she watched and waited as the cashier rung up a blue box of contact-lens fluid. Ben paid with cash. Only when he had completed his single item purchase, walked by her without the slimmest of sideways glances, and was headed out the automated doors did Pam surprise herself by initiating their second contact by shouting out his name. Ben stopped, appeared as if he wasn’t quite sure he had heard right, turned a full one-eighty, did a quick scan of the grocery shoppers behind him, and finally fixed on Pam’s open palm, waving at him. Ben looked as surprised as she, flashed that genuine smile, then walked to her.
And in that solitary moment of mutual recognition, Pam actually began to believe that men and coincidence could coexist within her universe. That happy accidents were a possibility. She tested her new belief by inviting Ben to join her for lunch.
“Divorced, huh?” Pam assumed before sipping the soup from her spoon.
Ben looked at her directly with his head slightly cocked, lips pressed together. Then he let his eyes dip sadly out of view.
“I lost them all awhile ago.” He choked up, cleared his throat, then found the easy save. “See. I kinda fibbed about the accountant and the tax deduction. Truth is the house I’m in is too big. Need to downsize for my own sanity.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Pam automatically. Her words were so quick and sounded so disingenuous that she suddenly felt ashamed. “That didn’t come out right.”
“Sure it did,” excused Ben.
“No,” she insisted. “I sounded as genuine as a condolence card.”
“Really. It’s okay.”
“Can I ask...” Pam stopped herself. Now she was sounding morbidly curious. “Sorry. You don’t have to.”
“Sometimes I wonder if... roles reversed... if I would ask,” said Ben. “Some people want to know, some people don’t.”
“Suppose it could also sound ghoulish.”
“Suppose.” Then Ben continued, “But I’ve found if you don’t ask how and why bad things happen, then you’ll never learn how to prevent things such as accidents.”
“And that’s what you do, right? You said you were a safety inspector?”
“Safety consultant,” corrected Ben. Without thinking, he withdrew a business card from his wallet and handed it across to Pam.
“Safety First,” read Pam. “Cool name.”
Ben realized his awful mistake right after he made it. He had just handed Stew’s wife a card bearing his name, business address, and office and mobile numbers. He couldn’t imagine how he could possibly ask Pam to hand it back.
“Was it an accident?” she asked.
At first, Ben was so fixated on the business card in her hand that he thought she was referring to his mistake, his potentially fatal error.
Of course it was a goddamn accident!
But Ben shook his head no. She was asking about his family. Sara and the twins. Was their death an accident? Ben’s eyes narrowed almost accusingly. He was so suddenly and acutely aware of what he was about to do and what he was about to say to Stew Raymo’s wife.
“They were murdered.”
Pam gasped.
“Random robbery thing. I wasn’t home. They were.” Ben shrugged off his anger. “No explanation, really. Other than bad things happen.”
“I couldn’t imagine...” said Pam. How could a man as kind and sweet as Ben withstand such an emotional body blow? Pam tried to spoon her soup, but found her hands were trembling ever so slightly.
“It’s okay,” said Ben. “Spent a long time getting over it. I’m sure you will, too.”
“But they got the guy, right?” she tried to confirm. “The guy or guys. The ones who did it. Please tell me.”
Under the table, Ben’s legs began to drip with sweat. He hadn’t touched his own soup, but the napkin in his hand was clenched into a ball.
“No,” said Ben, his voice cracking. “Listen. It was nice running into you again.”
“After so long a time apart,” joked Pam, trying to laugh. She was sorry and wanted to compensate for making Ben uncomfortable.
“Maybe we’ll run into each other again,” said Ben.
“Or maybe you’ll come back and make an offer on our house.”
A nervous laugh escaped from Ben as he rose. He couldn’t fathom the circumstances that would ever lead him to buy Stew Raymo’s house unless it was to light a match and burn it to the ground.
“Good luck with the adoption thing,” said Ben, making sure his palm was dry before shaking Pam’s hand.
“Thank you,” she said, a bi
t awkwardly. “Well...”
“Have a nice day,” said Ben, who retreated and escaped through the automated doors.
“Christ Almighty, Ben. What were you thinking?”
Ben talked aloud to himself as he hurried to his car. If happenstance had brought him in contact with Stew’s wife, how long before the big man himself made a guest appearance? Ben wasn’t half-ready for that. His sortie into Stew’s neighborhood was supposed to be nothing more than a drive-by. That was until he saw the For Sale by Owner sign on the lawn. And after ruminating in his car for twenty minutes, occasionally observing Stew’s wife as she wandered throughout the house, Ben felt drawn to the front door. Just for a knock and a few questions, he told himself, first making sure there was no sign of Stew. Not to see if he could get away with it, but to discover if within himself, there was a soul brave enough to ring the bell.
The rest had been pure adventure.
The drop-dead woman, initially wary of the unknown white male on her doorstep, was eventually comfortable enough to let him through her door. She had willingly walked him through the layout of the house from stem to stern. All while Ben played the easy part of being himself. The Safety Expert. He cruised from room to room as if this were a job, complimenting the woman on her eclectic style while characteristically assessing and cataloguing the inherent dangers within the house.
But there was a new danger. One Ben had never recognized before. And that danger was himself.
When Ben had followed Pam, out the back door and fifteen paces across the backyard to the garage’s locked side-door, he was oddly moved by how alone the two of them were. Then as Pam keyed the simple dead bolt and swung the door inward to her windowless, personal storage space, an idea formed in Ben’s psyche in what seemed like an instant.
He could kill her.
Right then and there, inside that black garage, Ben could simply pick up any heavy object and smash it into her head. Payback, he rationalized. Stew would come home, find his wife had been brutally murdered, and he and Ben would be closer to even.
But before the evil thought was purged, a thought that would eventually scare Ben back into reality, Pam switched on the overhead light to reveal her private junkyard.
The Safety Expert Page 21
