The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “Can’t move,” gurgled Stew. “Can’t feel nothin’.”

  Ben swung himself in the direction of the weak voice to find himself only inches away from Stew. Still, it was hard to hear over the roar of the water surging against and through the car. Ben’s eyes adjusted to the ambient light. He could see Stew’s shape, wedged between the Plexiglas partition and the driver’s door. While Stew’s head and neck were supported, the rest of his body swished and flapped with the movement of the current.

  “Anybody there? Can’t see ya but I hear ya coughin’.”

  “Water’s rising,” said Ben.

  “So why don’t you just swim?” said Stew. “Don’t tell me you can’t swim?”

  But Ben was still cuffed with that infernal seatbelt between himself and actual safety.

  “Stuck,” said Ben. “Handcuffed to a safety belt.”

  “Don’t that beat it,” chuckled Stew, weakly.

  To Ben it was a goddamned safety paradox. He kicked with his left leg until he found a foothold against the headrest.

  “What’s it mean... when you can’t feel shit?” asked Stew. He spoke with heavy breaths between phrases. “That’s bad, right...? Spinal and shit... yeah?”

  “Yeah,” said Ben, not exactly relieved that Stew no longer appeared to be a threat. The river was moving upward. He was handcuffed and would be drowning soon along with Stew. Ben stuck his head out the busted window, tugged at the belt, unwinding it until there was nothing left. He pulled, hoping against hope that he would be the million-to-one customer that experienced seatbelt failure. But there was no give to the reel. And most of Ben’s strength felt as if it had been expended, never to return.

  “I remember,” said Stew, even more haltingly. “Tried to forget . .. But... I remember most of it.”

  Ben was half listening, half trying to devise some kind of secondary plan that ended up with him surviving. That was until Stew continued.

  “Remember she... was blonde... Kinda pretty... Stuck to her guns, too... Her little girls... she kept sayin’... ‘Let my girls live’... So fucked up, man... so... fucked up, I... I didn’t listen... listen to shit from... nobody.”

  The water was close to overtaking the entire car. The cabin was totally swamped but for the inches of air Stew was still breathing. Ben had the window. That meant he had more time before his inevitable end.

  “Shoulda done it there... first night... in the bar... Showed you my piece... took what was in... register.”

  “What bar?”

  “Yours... You ’n’ me... we talked ’n’ talked... Served me... Ice Breaker, remember?”

  My bar? Stew came into my bar?

  “I don’t,” said Ben. Through the trauma, through the years, Ben had done everything he could to put it all behind him. To move on. Some memories were lost... or still locked away.

  “No matter...” said Stew, his voice near a whisper.

  The water was up to Stew’s ears, only an inch or so from submerging him forever.

  “I remember... tried to... forget... But you... you made me ’member... so good... good for you.”

  “I moved on,” said Ben. “I tried to move on.”

  “Yeah...” said Stew. “Was doin’... was doin’ so good... so good for awhile there... legit... Think, see... I moved on, too...”

  Stew’s words were stopped with a surge of water that rolled across the top of the river and smacked the car like a rogue wave in the middle of the sea. The car tilted and went completely under. Stew. Ben. Drowning in a churning tempest of leaves and soil and litter.

  The busted steering wheel clunked Ben in the jaw, then swirled around him, dragged by that spent airbag. Ben thought he heard a muddled jangle of keys. Without the slightest aforethought, as if by pure, unconscious instinct, Ben grabbed for the wheel. He found keys, still stuck in the ignition switch.

  Gonzo’s keys!

  With his lungs bursting, crying to inhale anything in order to end the ordeal, Ben touched on a tiny, cylindrical peg, gripped it, and jammed it at the handcuff lock—over and over again—until it slipped into the hole.

  All he had to do was twist the key. The cuffs released from his wrist and away he went with the current, bouncing through the cab, sucked out through the back window.

  If Ben was to be rescued, the work would have to be done by the river, the rain, and God.

  epilogue

  IN SIMI VALLEY, the arrival of June summoned warmer temperatures, a change of color in the wild, winter grasses that were sketched in and around the surrounding rocky slopes, and the end of the Simi Canyons school year.

  Most of the Simi Canyons students, from growing kindergartners to graduating high school seniors, experienced a far greater sense of giddiness than concern at the prospect of moving on, anticipating three months of summer holidays. Parents, on the other hand, were far more apprehensive, wondering how the hell they were going to manage both their own time and their children’s. Some moms and dads queued up in double pick-up lanes, and when they weren’t ignoring the safety rule of no texting or talking on cell phones while driving on campus, worried over summer camps or vacation plans or how they were going to budget for the next year’s tuition increase.

  Alex, though, in her usual cool and organized style, was looking to solve a more immediate problem. The recently dismissed high school principal was dogging her for a dinner date. Alex wanted to say yes. He was attractive, attentive, and now that he was no longer a school administrator, available to romantically socialize without any attached stigma. Alex’s problem, though, was threefold.

  Though officially separated from Ben, she had only just hired an attorney and filed for divorce.

  What would her girls think?

  And why was the principal’s firing still shrouded in mystery?

  The rumors had been flying for months about the terms of the man’s release, yet despite all the efforts of those gossipy Yummy Mummies, the school had successfully followed their lawyers’ advice and remained mum. A date with the tainted man would, at worst, solve the mystery. Alex would get the truth out of him. Or so she reasoned.

  A car honked from behind. The pick-up lanes were, for some reason, not moving at all. When Alex looked around for someone to ask what the holdup was, she noticed that, behind the wheel of the car to her right, was none other than Lydia Gonzalez.

  Alex could see that Gonzo, slightly obscured behind the tinted window of her Suburban, was still healing from her reconstructive surgery. Her hair was butch and short, only recently growing back after the initial hydrocephalus. The bandages on her face were clean, covering the harsher realities of the pins that held her shattered jaw together. Through the grapevine, Alex had heard that Gonzo could only take her meals through a straw, a sight better and more convenient than the feeding tube that had fed directly into her stomach.

  But seeing Gonzo behind the wheel gave Alex comfort. It meant the broken bones below her neck had healed sufficiently enough to allow her to drive to school and pick up her little boy, Travis, a graduating kindergartner.

  Alex rolled down her window and gave a polite shout.

  “Lydia?”

  At first, Gonzo didn’t respond. So giving it one last chance, Alex upped her volume.

  “Lydia!”

  Alex watched Gonzo’s eyes swerve in her direction. The tinted glass made their brown pigment look black and piercing until Gonzo lowered her window.

  “How are you?” asked Alex.

  Gonzo answered with a slight pause, then a subtler nod as if to say, “Okay.”

  “I see your hair’s growing in.”

  Gonzo didn’t hear the question, so she shrugged and hung her ear out the window.

  “I said you look well,” said Alex. “Your hair is growing in nicely.”

  Gonzo nodded a thank-you.

  “Travis looking forward to summer vacation?”

  Gonzo nodded again, and despite all the metal in her jaw and the wiring that kept her teeth clenched, mouthed a s
imple:

  “We both are.”

  Though it didn’t hurt for Gonzo to speak, to an observer it appeared uncomfortable as hell. Sometimes Gonzo wondered if and how she had used it to her advantage. Simply put, there were certain people she didn’t care to talk to. Parents, neighbors, colleagues. Conversations could carry on only so long when all Gonzo could do was shrug, nod or offer a thin smile.

  Ah, the upside of disability.

  On that fateful night, had Gonzo not been driving home in a cab that, in the terms of her union-negotiated settlement, was part of an active LAPD investigation, the accident would have remained uncovered by the insurance policies protecting officers from on-the-job injuries.

  None of that explained why her passenger and friend, Ben Keller, was handcuffed in the backseat. Protective custody, her lawyer had argued. Before the compensation review panel, Gonzo’s attorney successfully argued that her passenger was, despite his objection, in her protective custody from the clear and present threat of the man named Stew Raymo. The lawyer’s theory was proven by the ensuing deadly attack on that rain-drenched freeway.

  Remember the positives, girlfriend.

  Gonzo was spending more time with Travis now. And forever would be at school for every drop-off, pick-up and parent-involved activity that landed in between. No more long days with the baby sitter. At last, mommy belonged to Travis.

  Stew Raymo, a blessing in a scary disguise.

  Of the attack itself Gonzo drew pretty much a blank slate. She remembered the contact from behind, then smacking into the concrete divider. Because of the angle of impact and the stupid fact that she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, she had sailed over the airbag, snapping off the steering wheel at the column as it collided with her pelvis, hurling her through the windshield as if it were candy glass. Gonzo didn’t remember landing on the asphalt, but insisted she could still see the underbelly of Stew’s F-250, rear wheels stuck behind the barrier, sliding over her and spraying sparks into the rainy sky.

  While Gonzo was in the hospital recovering, Romeo appeared with a portable DVD player. As he replayed the enhanced version of the Caltrans recording of the accident, her faint memory proved correct. Frame by frame, they could track Gonzo’s limp body as it was ejected from the cab to the pavement, followed by Stew’s truck, bucking up onto the meridian and sliding right over her.

  “What dumb fucking luck,” Romeo had repeated over and over.

  Gonzo kept thinking about the seatbelt. Had she been wearing it, she wouldn’t have been sent flying into the street. And with the airbag already deployed, there was no imagining that she could have survived the second impact with the semi.

  But Ben had.

  Gonzo thought of Ben often. Not missing him so much as wondering about him.

  So with Alex only yards away, Gonzo braved her question.

  “How’s Ben?” she asked, forcing her voice to carry over her wired jaw.

  “What’s that?” asked Alex.

  “Ben,” forced Gonzo. “How... is... Ben?”

  “Have I seen Ben?” asked Alex, misreading Gonzo’s question.

  Close enough, nodded Gonzo.

  “We’re separated,” said Alex without much pause whatsoever, let alone a trace of sadness. But that was Alex. Usually matter-of-fact, bordering on cold. She was dependable that way, purposefully keeping her problems in the rearview mirror. Always moving on.

  “He sees the girls sometimes,” continued Alex. “It’s mostly Betsy, though. She misses him most, and well... it’s nice that Ben makes the time. He’s good that way.”

  It was answer enough for Gonzo, who nodded her appreciation. When Alex’s queue began to move, she waved her trademark lacquered nails and smiled brightly.

  “Have a great summer!” said Alex, rolling ahead.

  Gonzo waved back and hit the button that automatically returned her window to the fully closed position. Silence filled her car. Her emotions rumbled underneath her skin. With the emotions came a recurring guilt. What could have been? Had she not succumbed to Alex’s blackmail, Gonzo never would have made the call that set in motion the couple’s separation. And if the relationship had still been intact, would Ben have climbed out onto that dangerous limb that led to, well, that god-awful Wednesday night? Gonzo would never know. All she could hope for was that someday, maybe, she would have the chance to apologize to Ben in such a way that he might actually forgive her.

  Josie Jones had retreated to her mother’s house in New Mexico. After the week long booze and cocaine binge following her twelve-hour fling with Stew, she got scared for her future, hopped an overnight train to Albuquerque and checked herself directly into a twenty-eight-day recovery program. The events of that rainy night remained a mystery to her. When she finally called Ben’s office, the number had been disconnected. The same was true for both Ben’s cell number and home phone. Her brightest idea was to contact private detective Woody Bell. If Woody didn’t know how to contact Ben, he would surely have the resources to find him.

  But Woody’s number had also been switched off.

  An eventual Google search proved shocking to Josie as she read a single blurb that had appeared in the Valley’s Daily News. It told of the stymied police investigation into Woody Bell’s murder. The rough details were that Woody had been found with his wheelchair, dead at the bottom of his empty pool. Foul play was suspected. And there were persons of interest within the Armenian mob with whom the police were seeking to speak.

  Josie could find nothing more on the murder.

  In late May, she finally received an email reply from Ben that read simply:

  Glad you are recovering in Albuquerque. All is well and as it should be. Be safe. Ben.

  The baby cried.

  Pam, in denial that she was sleep-deprived, snapped awake from her twelve-minute nap, oriented herself on the couch, and made her way back to the baby’s room.

  How the hell did I just fall asleep so fast?

  Stew’s former office was unrecognizable. After the funeral, it had been quickly remodeled from a cramped space of un-filed papers, dirt stains and clutter, to a tastefully simple nursery. Crib, bureau, changing table, and rocking chair. Swedish pine all. The walls were painted in calming pastels, complete with ascending cherubs and silly jungle animals, all hand-painted with loving care by mommy.

  “What’s all the fuss?” smiled Pam, sweetly whispering to her baby boy. “I just changed you so you’re not dirty. Are you the only one in the house who doesn’t want a nap?”

  Pam reached into the crib and picked up the ten-week-old baby. Her gift, she called him. A joyous dividend of fate and love. Wannabe parents wait months, even years, before placement with a newborn. But timing and luck had been on her side. A young couple in Fairbanks, Alaska, had registered with an adoption site at nearly the precise moment Pam had finished her first phone interview with the online adoption attorney. Maybe he had been wowed by his eighty-minute talk with Pam. Or could he have recognized her from the photo she had attached to the e-application, and as an ardent fan, moved her up to the top of the baby list? Pam didn’t know nor did she care. She had a baby of her own and that was the end of that.

  The For Sale by Owner sign was gone, trashed, left for scavengers to resuscitate from a landfill. As was every remnant and reminder of her dead husband. Curb to property line. Vanished, dismissed, and with a prayer, someday forgotten.

  Pam lifted her boy, named Michael after her favorite, fifth-grade homeroom teacher, cradled him to her left shoulder, and went about preparing a warm bottle of Enfamil. She still wasn’t used to every drawer and cupboard being locked in place with safety catches for both earthquakes and the day in the future when young Michael would stand on his own two legs and attempt to explore every imaginable hiding place, crevasse, and electrical outlet, all already protected from a toddler’s probing nubs.

  The baby, briefly pacified by his attentive mother, expressed himself with another complaint.

  “Sssshhhh,” soothed P
am

  She married a nipple from the drying rack with a collar and plastic bottle. All she needed to do was fill the bottle from a container in the fridge, nuke it for twenty-five seconds, and the meal would be ready to serve.

  Only the phone rang.

  Catch it before the second ring, thought Pam. Grab the handset quick and answer in a calm, clarifying voice. She shifted Michael to the opposite shoulder, reached for the telephone, pressed LINE 1, and spoke.

  “Safety first,” answered Pam, professional and proud.

  Michael couldn’t wait. He had seen the bottle, watched it being filled with thick, sweetened, luscious, sand-colored goo, then heard the oh-so-familiar beep-beep-beeping of mommy’s fingers setting the timer on the microwave.

  So Michael wailed.

  Pam quickly placed the caller on hold.

  “Sssshhhh. You wanna wake the dead?”

  “The dead are already awake,” said the voice from behind her.

  The baby’s eyes widened in sudden recognition.

  Pam turned in place and smiled apologetically with the phone still at her ear.

  “Please hold...” she said, “for Ben Martin.”

  She held out the phone to Ben.

  “Sorry.”

  “No apologies necessary,” said Ben with sleepy eyes.

  He was only half-awakened from his nap, barefoot, bare-chested, wearing nothing but a pair of old Levi’s. He kissed Michael on the forehead, then Pam on the lips, and accepted the telephone.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ben to the caller. “This is Ben Martin. What can I do for you?”

  Pam rubbed her knuckles sweetly against Ben’s soft belly hair, then returned to serving Michael his baby formula. She sat comfortably in a kitchen chair, tilted the bottle into Michael’s little maw, and watched as another chapter in her new life unfolded before her eyes.