by Rich Leder
“A wall of diplomas, I get it,” Danny said.
“So if I’m an educated man with a wall of diplomas, why am I taking time out of my day to wait for a woman who you say can breathe life into death?”
“Because you want your dog back,” Danny said, gesturing at the pictures of the poodle.
Greenburg didn’t know Danny very well. He barely knew him at all. Danny was a newer patient with only a few fillings and a couple crowns who liked his teeth to be especially white. He had told Greenburg that a bright smile was the key to new clients. “Nobody signs with an agent who has yellow teeth,” Danny had said to him not even a year ago. Maybe it was true. Or maybe Danny was vain. Maybe both. Greenburg had no idea. The truth was that the dentist didn’t know any of his patients very well. Even the patients who had been with him for twenty years or more he hardly knew.
He could thank his wife for that. Like the sun, she had mesmerized him, blinded him, kept him in close orbit, and commanded all his energy. He had no friends and no hobbies and no life. Actually, he had Chachi. They both had Chachi. One day soon, he admitted to himself, he would have no one.
He was thinking about how deeply he missed his dog and how insane he was to think that there was a human person on Earth who could raise the dead when one of his nurses knocked on his office door. He told her to come in, and she opened the door and moved aside, and Jenny Stone stepped into the room. The nurse shut the door again, and the three of them were alone.
Danny stood up. To Greenburg, he seemed surprised somehow, thrown for a loop, as if Danny didn’t quite recognize her, as if this was some other client, an actress, maybe, or a singer who had gotten her time and date and place wrong, not the Breather of Life.
“Dr. Greenburg,” Danny said, “this is my client, Jenny. Jenny, this is my dentist, Dr. Greenburg.”
Greenburg did not stand. Instead, he stared at Jenny and tried to decide if she looked like a person who could breathe life into death. She was twenty-eight or nine, five foot six, with the kind of figure that most men find attractive, curvy but thin. She had straight brown hair with golden highlights that was parted on the side and reached below her shoulders. She did not wear glasses, and her eyes were green. She wore a breezy red sundress and leather sandals. Her nails were painted red to match the sundress. She wore makeup and jewelry and was, to his eye, a pretty young woman. Years ago, before his life went off the rails, he would have dreamed about having sex with her. But now he was too far gone for dreams like that.
“My mother was running late,” Jenny said. “Sorry about your dog.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” Greenburg said, gesturing at the chair beside Danny. “Have a seat.”
Danny and Jenny both sat down, and Danny told Greenburg the story of the dehydrated-dry-and-shriveled-brown dead fern that Jenny breathed on and how it was now vibrant and green and alive. He showed Greenburg a photo of the plant on his phone. He left out the bit about Omar lifting him up like he was a grade school boy and choking him until he passed out.
Greenburg was unimpressed. The breathing-on-the-plant part is when he realized the whole thing was a con and wished Danny and the woman would leave his office so he could crack the Tanqueray in his credenza, pour a drink, do a line, and face the rest of the afternoon and the rest of his miserable life.
“So I’m supposed to give you cash and, in return, you’re going to breathe on my dog and he’s going to come back to life?” Greenburg said.
“Absolutely,” Danny said.
“And I’m supposed to disregard the fact that such a thing is impossible and against the laws of nature and science and religion and reason?” Greenburg said.
“Yes,” Danny said.
“And the proof is the picture of the plant?” Greenburg said.
“It was dead, and then it wasn’t,” Danny said.
Greenburg was sad and angry and disappointed and forlorn. Chachi was on ice in the garage freezer, and now he would have to bury him in the yard. The Seuss Search and Save posse would fade to failure, and his wife would hang herself one day while he was filling a cavity. This was the only future he could see.
“Either I’m blinded by grief, in which case you are a heartless asshole con man, or I’m a moron, in which case you are a mean-spirited, son-of-a-bitch con man,” Greenburg said to Danny. “Probably I’m both, but either way I need to have my head examined for giving you ten minutes of my time.”
“It’s not a con,” Danny said. “I saw it happen. Jenny can—”
“And you,” Greenburg said to Jenny, “the fact that you allow yourself to be pimped like this makes you even more pathetic than I am. You should be ashamed of yourself for taking advantage of someone’s sadness.”
Jenny looked into her lap as if ashamed of herself for taking advantage of someone’s sadness.
Greenburg turned his eyes back to Danny. “I would report you both to the police, but they would arrest me for stupidity.”
“I’m telling you that—” Danny said.
“That what,” Greenburg said, “you’re the most unethical talent agent in the history of the entertainment business? I may be at the end of my wife’s rope, but even from here I can see that. Now get out of my office, or I will call the police.”
“Dr. Greenburg—”
“Get out,” Greenburg said, “and find another dentist while you’re at it.”
The dentist stared at Danny, and Danny stared back.
“We’re not leaving until you give us a chance,” Danny said, sounding nearly as desperate as Greenburg.
Greenburg hit a button on his phone and said into the speaker, “Kathy, call building security, and then call the police. Tell them—”
Before Greenburg could finish his thought, Jenny stood up, put her hand into the fishbowl, grabbed one of the goldfish, and dropped it on the desk in front of the dentist.
“Jesus Christ,” Greenburg said, pushing his chair back against the credenza. He looked at Danny, but the talent agent seemed as stunned as he was.
The poor little fish flapped violently on the desk, fighting for its life, and then suffocated and died. It was completely and utterly dead.
They all stared at the fish in silence, and then Greenburg looked up at Jenny and said, “Are you crazy? What the hell was that?”
Jenny said nothing. Greenburg turned to Danny. “She killed my goldfish. It’s dead on my desk.”
And then Jenny leaned over and put her face close to the fish and gently blew on it. She stood again, and her lips turned ever so slightly up at the corners.
Greenburg didn’t know what to do. He started to speak, but Danny cut him off with a wave and said, “Wait.”
There was silence for thirty seconds, and then the fish started to flap around the desk, slowly at first and then like a house on fire. Jenny took the fish in her hand and placed it back in the bowl. It commenced swimming circles, completely and perfectly alive. She made eye contact with Greenburg and then walked out of the office.
“Seventy-five thousand in cash,” Danny said. “Any questions?”
THE AGONY OF ALL THIS DEFEAT
In addition to owning sixty-four homes in the Valley, Mrs. Alemi owned three self-storage facilities. She chose the one in Chatsworth, on De Soto near Plummer, to deposit the contents of the small yellow house until Mike could make arrangements to move them elsewhere.
“I had a great deal of respect and admiration for your mother, Michael,” Mrs. Alemi said as she unlocked the roll-up door to a double unit. “I’m sorry for your loss. Please do not feel hurried. Settling your mother’s affairs will take time. Her possessions may stay here without expense until the end of the summer. Does that sound fair to you?”
It was one hundred seven degrees but it felt twenty degrees hotter in the middle of Mrs. Alemi’s Valley Storage facility, which was constructed entirely of cement and held the heat like a Dutch oven.
“More than fair, Mrs. Alemi. Thank you,” Mike said.
She stepped away fro
m the door, and Mike moved in and lifted it up. Everything Saint Linda owned was inside this unit.
“No rush, Michael. I’ll wait in the office,” Mrs. Alemi said, and she walked away toward the large front building that held the office, a supply store where she sold boxes and tape and other appropriate supplies, and an apartment for the facility manager.
Mike nodded thanks, took a breath, walked into the unit, and turned on the light. It was hot as hell in this concrete box, but he was out of the sun, and that was a relief. He had forgotten what relief felt like. Thirty-six hours ago, his mother had died of a heart attack, and since that frozen moment in time, he had lost his job because of a real estate zombie who was stalking him under false pretenses, had lost his wife and daughters in Paramus, New Jersey, had lost his garage to his flim-flam brother, and had lost his mind by agreeing to bring a dead dog back to life for a cash payment.
But those thoughts fell away as he looked around the unit. Mrs. Alemi had made sure her six sons were careful with Linda’s things. Boxes were labeled—LR for living room, K for kitchen, DR for dining room—furniture was covered with plastic and duct taped for safe keeping, and things weren’t stacked on other things. He moved deeper into the unit and looked for his mother’s dresser or a wardrobe box labeled MBR for master bedroom that would hold his mother’s clothes. He was searching for a business suit that she would literally wear to her grave.
It was a journey through time.
Here was the sofa Danny and Mike played on as kids. They would remove the cushions, set them on the floor in a big square, stand on top of the back of the sofa, jump down onto the springs, and shoot up into the air and land on the cushions. They called it their indoor diving pool and did flips and jackknifes and cannonballs, scoring each other like Olympic judges, taking breaks for Kraft cheese slices and Kool-Aid and cookies. Linda loved that sofa because her sons had loved it. She had reupholstered it several times and bought new cushions when the originals gave out, but she had never replaced it.
Here was the dinette set that fit in a corner of the kitchen. How many meals had they eaten at that table? It had to be ten thousand or more. This is where Linda made them macaroni and meatballs, enchiladas, tomato rice soup, scrambled eggs with crumbled bacon and jack cheese, Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas ham, birthday cake, and all of the comfort food he would never eat again.
Here was the desk where he did his homework, where his mother sat beside him and showed him how to figure fractions and percentages and quizzed him before spelling tests and history exams. This desk, this desk, was where his mother had taught him about hard work, accuracy, honesty, and proficiency.
He came upon a tall wardrobe box labeled MBR and opened it and found his mother’s dresses and blouses and skirts and jackets and business suits. He chose a navy blue suit and a white blouse, held them to his face, smelled his mother, fell to his knees, and began to weep.
He’d thought he was done crying, thought his emotional landslide in the hospital had been the end of it, but grief wins over logic every time, and he had grief aplenty. Linda had been dead a day and a half, and his soul hurt at the thought of never seeing her again.
His life was suddenly a cesspool of pain and failure. He had spoken to Marcy just this morning, told her that in addition to losing his job and career, in addition to being stalked by a madman zombie, Danny had moved into the garage because he, Mike, had sworn an oath on Linda’s dying heart. Marcy had been quiet for a minute and then said she would start looking at apartments and researching the Paramus public schools in case she and the girls never came back.
The agony of all this defeat poured out of him without inhibition, and then he heard Judd Martin say, “You’re a pussy, fat man. A fat fucking pussy.”
Mike opened his eyes, and Judd was standing immediately in front of him, pointing a Smith & Wesson Snubnose revolver directly at his face. How long had he been there? How could Mike have missed him? What the hell? What the hell?
“Stop stalking me, Judd,” Mike said loudly and with power. Here, in Mrs. Alemi’s storage unit, amidst the memories of his life and his mother’s possessions, he had reached the outermost limits of his sanity. “This is stupid, and I’m tired of it. Get the hell out of my face, you fucking freak.”
He was on his knees, holding his mother’s blue business suit and white blouse, and he was conscious of Judd raising the gun. Then he was aware of the gun moving toward him with speed and force. But it was so surreal—the whole damn business of his life these last two days—that this moment was just part of his racing river of madness, so he didn’t react, didn’t move a muscle.
There was an explosion of unbelievable pain when the gun hit him in the side of the head, and then there was nothing.
And then it hurt to open his eyes. It hurt to breathe, and his head was throbbing. What the hell had happened to him? Then he heard a voice that sounded far, far away. It was Judd Martin.
“I’m going to kill you, Mike. That’s the thing you have to understand.”
Oh my God, Mike thought between flashes of excruciating pain and throbbing in his skull, now I remember. And remembering made the pain worse, not better.
“I may kill you today, but I may wait a week or two because this is better than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be pretty fucking good to begin with.”
Mike tried to run for his life, but he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He tried to yell for help, but what came out was a muffled moan, unintelligible and animalistic. And he was sitting. He opened his eyes, and the reality of his current condition hit him like, well, a snubnose in the head.
He was duct taped to a dinette set chair, possibly the very chair he’d sat in while growing up in the small yellow house. He was wearing his boxers and his socks and nothing else. Judd had stripped off his clothes and duct taped him to a chair in the back of Mrs. Alemi’s storage unit, behind the dressers, out of sight.
Judd had not changed one iota since making Mike climb into the coffin at the mortuary yesterday—Jesus, that was yesterday, Mike thought—except to become even more zombie-like, dirtier, crazier, more wild-eyed, more tattered and unkempt. He was six feet away, very close by, sitting opposite Mike on a matching dinette set chair, sifting through the contents of Mike’s wallet—Mike’s clothes on the ground beside him.
“You call me a freak, but look at you, Mike. You’re so fucking boring that you’re the fucking freak. Look at your pathetic life. Who the fuck lives a life this fucking pathetic? Look at your wife and kids. Are you fucking kidding me? You think these people love you? They don’t. They hate your fucking guts. You’re boring, and you’re a loser, and that’s what everybody who knows you thinks, whether they say it to your face or not: you’re a fat fucking freak loser.
I’m not fat, Mike said, shouting, but it got lost in the duct tape and sounded instead like begging for mercy.
“Anyway,” Judd said, flipping the wallet aside, “the question on the table is what am I going to do to you today, and I think the answer is beat your ass. I think that would make me feel like a fucking champ.”
He stood up, cracked his knuckles in a disturbing manner, took a step toward Mike, and a cell phone rang. Both Mike and Judd looked at Mike’s pants. Judd picked them up, took the phone out of the back pocket, and answered it.
“Hello. Yeah, it’s me. I got bad reception in the storage unit; doesn’t sound like you either.”
He covered the phone, pulled out his knife, looked at Mike, and said, “It’s your brother. I’m going to put him on speaker. If you make any noise, I’ll cut your cock off.”
The thought of Judd cutting his cock off with the hunting knife shut Mike up in half a second. Judd put the call on speaker, moved closer to Mike, and held the phone so they could both hear whatever Danny had to say.
“We met with Greenburg, me and Jenny,” Danny said. “She did it, Mike; she really did it. I saw it with my own eyes. Greenburg had a dead goldfish on his desk, and she breathed on it, and then it
was swimming in the bowl. I thought he was going to pass out. I thought I was going to pass out. It was incredible. She walked out of the office, and I said seventy-five grand cash, and he said he was in. Tonight. He’s in tonight, after work, at his house. His wife’s got a search party going for the dog, and he’s got to get this done before she gets back. We’re on for tonight. You still there?”
“Still here,” Judd said.
“Seventy-five grand cash,” Danny said, and he clicked off the call.
Judd tossed the phone aside, picked Mike’s shirt up off the floor, tied it around Mike’s head like a blindfold and said, “Okay Mike, the only way to stop this beating is to tell me who Greenburg is and where he lives. I’d take the tape off your mouth, but I think you’d tell me before I got to beat you at all, and that’s no good for me.”
Mike clenched and clamped and waited to be hit. His body ached; he could feel his heart pounding, the blood rushing to his head. He thought he might die from the tension, and then he heard Mrs. Alemi say, “Michael, what is the meaning of this?”
A GIANT FUCK YOU TO HIS KILLER
There were three cars parked one beside the other in front of Pacoima Pawn and Loan: Harvey Mineral’s black Range Rover, Donald Greenburg’s silver Lexus, and Carol Greenburg’s white Mercedes Coupe. Omar inspected the Mercedes while Harvey and Dr. Greenburg, nervous and twitchy and high on coke, stood by, sweating in the sun.
It was one hundred eight degrees at two o’clock in the afternoon on Thursday, and the Weather Channel woman said the heat index in the San Fernando Valley would reach one fifteen. There was an unseasonal Santa Ana, a Devil Wind, blowing down from the mountains with a vengeance. It was hot and inhuman air that felt like a blast furnace in the face and whipped the people of Los Angeles into a foul and burning frenzy, causing a quantifiable increase in suicides and homicides that turned the City of Angels into the City of Satan. Just the kind of day that made Harvey remember his mother.
