Bad Things

by Michael Marshall

  “It’s not so terrible, I guess. I just don’t get it. There’s signs on all three doors—front, back, kitchen—saying no money’s left on the premises overnight. So what the hell? Huh? What kind of fuckhead comes all the way over here in the middle of the night, just to screw up someone else’s day?”

  “Maybe they didn’t believe you about the money,” I said. “Fuckheads can be strange like that.”

  As the car slowed into the lot I saw Becki’s car “parked” down the end. “Don’t tell me Kyle’s here already?”

  Ted laughed, and for a moment looked less harried and disappointed with mankind in general.

  “I had to call Becki to work out how to get your phone number off the database. I told her she didn’t have to do anything, but she came right over.”

  He pulled the pickup to come to rest next to his daughter’s vehicle.

  “You called the cops, I assume?”

  “Been and gone. They sent their two best men, as I’m sure you can imagine. Not convinced either of them aced the ‘How to pretend you give a shit’ course, though. And I’ve comped a lot of appetizers and drinks for both those assholes in the past.”

  We got out and I followed Ted to the restaurant. He led me around the side to the back door, the one you’d enter if you’d been out on deck with a drink before coming in for dinner.

  The remains of the external door there was hanging open, most of the panes broken. The slats that once held the glass in place lay in splinters on the floor. Becki was hunkered down in the short corridor beyond the doorway, working a dustpan and hand brush.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “It doesn’t look so bad.”

  “Not anymore,” she said, straightening up. She’d evidently been at the job awhile, and a couple of blond hairs were stuck to her forehead. She looked pissed off. “The guys are still working in the back.”

  I went through the second door—which had been more gently forced—and into the main area of the restaurant. The Pelican’s register and reservations system runs on a newish Mac with an external cash drawer. The latter had been unsuccessfully attacked with a chisel and/or crowbar. I looked at this for a while and then headed into the back, where the brigade was tidying the kitchen.

  “They messed it up some in here,” Ted said, unnecessarily, as he joined me. It looked like one or two people had really made a meal of throwing things around. “And it seems like we got a machine missing.”

  “Juicer,” confirmed one of the cooks—the guy who’d stared at me on the way out of the lot last night. He looked less moody now, and I could guess why. He and his fellow non-Americans would not have enjoyed the police visit earlier, most likely spending it on an extended cigarette break half a mile down the road. They would also be very aware of being high on most people’s list of suspects—either for doing the job themselves, or passing the opportunity to an accomplice, along with the information that any alarm would go unanswered.

  “Kind of a dumb break-in,” I said, directly to him. “I mean, everybody knows there’s no cash left here, right?”

  “Yeah, of course,” the cook said, nodding quickly. “We all know that. But some people, you know? They think it’s fun, this kind of thing.”

  “Probably just kids,” I said, looking past him to the anteroom off the side where staff changed and hung their coats. “Anyone lose anything out of there?”

  “Well, no,” Ted said. “Nobody here in the middle of the night, right? The lockers were empty.”

  “Duh,” I said. “Of course.”

  I turned, and saw Becki standing out in the restaurant looking at me.

  I have no formal training in fixing things, but common sense and good measuring will get most of the job done. My dad had game at that kind of thing, and I spent long periods as a child watching him. Ted and I measured the broken panes and the wood that needed replacing, he listened to my instructions for a couple more items, then drove off to get it all from a hardware store in Astoria. Meanwhile Becki headed out to get a replacement cash drawer from a supplier over in Portland that she’d tracked down on the Net.

  Ted was gone well over an hour. I sat on deck and slowly drank a Diet Coke. I was feeling an itch at the back of my head, but didn’t want to yield to it. I knew that if I was back at the beach house, however, as normal at this time of day, then I’d already have done so. I also knew it would have been dumb, however, and that it was a box in my head I didn’t want to open. The smart tactic with actions that don’t make sense is to not do them the first time. Otherwise, after that, why not do them again?

  Nonetheless I found myself, ten minutes later, at the till computer. The Web browser Becki had been using was still up on screen. I navigated to my Internet provider’s site and checked my e-mail, quickly, before I could change my mind and fail to yield to impulse. There was nothing there.

  That was good. I wouldn’t be checking again.

  Eventually Ted got back with the materials and I started work. The external door had been pretty solid, and so kicking the panes out had badly splintered the frame around the lock. I levered the damaged side off under Ted’s watchful eye.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?”

  “Kinda,” I said. “More than you do, anyhow.”

  “I get what you’re saying,” he said, and went inside.

  I worked slowly but methodically, which is the best way of dealing with the subversive ranks of inanimate objects. Ted proved to have a thorough selection of tools, which helped, as did having gone through the process of figuring out how to replace Gary’s screen door a few months back. Security and good sense dictated replacing the door with something more robust, but Ted was adamant it needed to look the way it had, for tradition’s sake. I’d specified that he at least buy supertoughened glass, also some metal strips that I intended using to strengthen the off-the-rack door.

  While I was working through that portion of the job, Becki returned. I was ready for a break from hammering and sawing, so I went to give her a hand with the cash drawer, which was not light. In the end she let me carry it by myself, though she hovered encouragingly in the background and went off to fetch me a soda as a reward, while I levered it into position and bolted it in place.

  She got sidetracked with some issue in the kitchen, and I was back at work on the door by the time she returned with a Dr Pepper stacked with ice.

  She stood around for a while and watched me working, without saying anything.

  “That was a nice thing you did,” she said, after maybe five minutes.

  “What’s what?”

  “You know. Signaling to the cooks that you thought they didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “They didn’t.”

  I concentrated on maneuvering a pane of glass, making sure it was bedded properly before screwing a piece of the metal brace work securely into place. When I turned around Becki was still looking at me, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  I smiled. “What?”

  “You haven’t always been a waiter, have you.”

  “No,” I said. “But it’s what I am now.”

  She nodded slowly, and walked back inside.

  Midway through the day, the guy from the kitchen brought out a plate of food. I hadn’t asked for this, or expected it. It was very good, too, a selection of handmade empanada-style things filled with spicy shrimp and fish.

  “That was great,” I said, when he came back for the plate. “You should get Ted to put those on the menu.”

  The cook smiled, shrugged, and I guess I knew what he meant. I stuck out my hand. “John,” I said.

  He shook it. “Eduardo.”

  “Got the dough ready for the young maestro yet?”

  He laughed, and went back inside.

  It took over six hours, but eventually everything was done. By four o’clock I’d replaced the frames on inner and outer doors, and fixed the other damage. Becki had the register back up and running, something I was surprised she was capable of doin
g. Her entire demeanor during the day had been something of an eye opener. I hadn’t figured her for capable and businesslike. The guys in back had meanwhile returned the kitchen to its spotless and socked-away state.

  Ted came on an inspection tour, pronounced it good, grabbed a couple handfuls of beers, and took them out on deck. We all sat together, Ted, Becki, and me with the guys out of the kitchen—and Mazy, too, when she wandered in as if fresh out of some flower-scented fairy realm—and drank slowly in the sun, which wasn’t very warm, but still pleasant. Fairly soon Ted got his head around the fact that though more than one of the cooks was called Eduardo, none was actually called Raul.

  After a while Becki got up and went and fetched some more beers. She dispersed them around the crew and then offered one to me. I looked at my watch, realized it was coming up on five. I’d been working in direct sunlight half the day and my shirt was sticking to my back.

  “I need to get back to my place to change,” I said. “Pretty soon, in fact.”

  “I’ll give you a ride,” she said as I stood up.

  “This is good of you,” I said as we walked together to her car. She didn’t say anything.

  She waited out on deck while I took a shower. As I came out into the living room I saw she’d taken a beer from my fridge and was sitting drinking it, looking out to sea. I sat in the other chair.

  “Going to have to head back soon,” I said.

  She nodded, looking down at her hands. I offered her a cigarette, which she took, and we lit up and sat smoking in silence for a moment.

  “How much trouble is he in?” I asked eventually.

  She glanced up. The skin around her eyes looked tight. “How did you know?”

  “Why steal a battered juicer and leave a computer? The mess in the kitchen was overdone, and the cash drawer looked like it was attacked by a chimp. No one came there last night looking for money. So where was it? In the locker room?”

  She nodded.

  “Dope, or powder?”

  “Not dope.”

  “How much?”

  “About ten thousand dollars’ worth.” Her voice was very quiet. “Jesus, Becki. How stupid do you have to be, to stash that much cocaine in your father’s restaurant?”

  “I didn’t know it was there,” she said angrily. “This is Kyle’s fucking thing.”

  “Kyle? How did he even get that much capital? Please don’t tell me you gave it to him.”

  “He got a loan. From . . . some guys he knows.”

  It was all I could do not to laugh. “Oh, smart move. So now he’s royally fucked, owing not just the back end of drugs he no longer has to sell, but the money he used to buy them in the first place. Perfect.”

  “That about covers it.” She breathed out heavily, drained the rest of her beer in one swallow. “And if you’re thinking of getting heavy about drugs, I don’t need to hear it.”

  “No, drugs are way cool,” I said. “Moral imbeciles making fortunes from fucking up other people’s lives, staying out of sight while wannabes like your idiot boyfriend take all the risks.”

  “Better get you back. Going to be a busy night.”

  “Take it I’m going to be on pizzas?”

  She smiled briefly, crooked and sad, and I realized how much I liked her, and also how close she was to seeing her life veer down a bad track into the woods. “I’m not sure where he even is right now.” We stood together.

  “And you can’t just walk away from this?”

  “I love him,” she said, in the way only twenty-year-olds can.

  She drove me back to the restaurant, letting me out at the top of the access road.

  “Go find him,” I said. “Get the names of anyone he might have told where he stashed his gear.”

  She looked up at me. “And then?”

  “And then,” I said. I tapped the car twice with the flat of my hand, and she drove away.

  The front door to the restaurant was open, other front-of-house staff busily arranging chairs out on deck, but I walked around the other way and went in through the portal I’d spent most of the day replacing. I reached out as I walked through, and gave it a shove. It felt very firm.

  There’s something good about having rebuilt a door. It makes you feel like you’ve done something. It makes you believe things are fixable, even when you know that generally they are not.

  CHAPTER 4

  What can you do, when things start to fall apart? Let us count the ways. . .

  Not panic, of course, that’s the main thing. Once you start, it’s impossible to stop. Panic is immune to debate, to analysis, to earnest and cognitively therapeutic bullet points. Panic isn’t listening. Panic has no ears, only a voice. Panic is wildfire in the soul, vaulting the narrow paths of reason in search of fresh wood and brush on the other side, borne into every corner of the mind by the winds of anxiety.

  Carol wasn’t even sure when it had started, or why. The last couple of months had been good. For the first time she’d started to feel settled. The apartment began to feel like a home. She got a part-time job helping at the library under the dreaded Miss Williams, tidying chairs and putting up posters and helping organize reading groups. Work more suited to some game oldster or slack-jawed teen, admittedly, but gainful employment all the same. She walked to the library and back and yet still managed to put on a few pounds, having regained something of an appetite. She made acquaintances, even put tentative emotional down payments on a couple of potential friends, and generally quit acting like someone in a witness protection program.

  Sometimes, she even just . . . forgot. That had been best of all, the times when she suddenly remembered—because it proved there had been a period, however short, when she had not.

  At some point in the last few days this had started to change. She woke feeling as if she had sunk a couple of inches into the bed overnight. Instead of vigorously soaping herself in the shower, she stood bowed under the water, noticing flecks of mildew between a pair of tiles and wondering how she could have missed them before, and if she’d get around to doing something about it—or if it would just get worse and worse until she was the kind of woman who had grubby tiles and nothing could be done about that or the state of the yard or her clothes or hair. Chaos stalks us all, gaining entrance through cracks in trivial maintenance, the thing left undone. As soon as you realize how much there is to do to keep presenting a front, it becomes horribly easy to stop believing, and start counting again instead.

  It was better when she got out into the world, but still it felt as if her momentum was faltering. Books slipped from her hands, and she could not find things in stores. A bruise appeared on her hip from some minor collision she couldn’t recall. Annoyingly, this reminded her of something her ex-husband used to say: that you can always tell when your mood is failing, because the world of objects turns mutinous, as if the growing storm in your head unsettles the lower ranks outside.

  And then, three evenings before, she had found herself returning to the front door after locking it for the night.

  She knew it was shut. She could see it was shut, that the bolt was drawn. She remembered doing it, for God’s sake, could recall the chill of the chain’s metal against her fingertips. That night, these memories were enough. The next, they were not, and she returned twice to make sure.

  And last night she’d done it eight times, furiously, eyes wide as she watched herself draw and redraw the chain, turning the key in the lock until it wouldn’t turn any further, over and over, before finally withdrawing it. It wouldn’t be nine times tonight. That wasn’t how counting worked. If it didn’t stop now, it would escalate to sets of eight.

  Sixteen times, twenty-four. . .

  To understand how much a person can mistrust reality and themselves, you need to stand in a cold hallway, fighting back tears of selfhatred and frustration, as you watch your own hands check a simple bolt over twenty times.

  She knew the walls of your skull were not a bastion. That thoughts could get in t
hrough the cracks, and did. That, in fact, if you felt in certain ways, it was a pretty sure sign they already had. The more she opened her mind to panic, the more likely she’d start slipping down that road again. So she wasn’t going to panic.

  Not yet.

  These thoughts occupied her most of the way home from the library, under skies that were a smooth and unbroken gray. Once indoors she made a pot of strong coffee. She had an hour before he got back. Once he was home it would be easier. She’d have plenty to keep her mind off things. It also meant she wouldn’t actually be able to do anything, however.

  For a moment, thinking of Tyler, she felt a little better. Dinner could wait. Neither of them was a fussy eater. She could whip something up later. So. . .

  She fetched her laptop from the living room and brought it to the kitchen table. When her browser was up she hesitated, hands over the keyboard.

  She felt driven to do something, but . . . what? She had thousands of words saved onto her hard disk, innumerable pdfs, two hundred bookmarked sites. The problem was none of the creators of these sites knew they were relevant. They were like people wandering the streets, blithely observing that portions of the sidewalk seemed to become white once in a while, without having the faintest understanding of snow. You needed to comprehend the system to place these reports in context. She did understand, had glimpsed it, at least. She was smart, too, though it seemed to her now that she’d never really capitalized on this.

  There had been times when she’d experienced a glimpse of freedom, especially during the last couple of months. When it had occurred to her that the whole thing could be nonsense, a cloud on her vision that had never been more than a speck of dust in her eye. It didn’t matter how many metaphors she conjured, however—and English had been one of her best subjects in high school—in the end, she knew she believed. Her faith was dark and unshakable. The knowledge did not make her feel better, and her faith didn’t make her feel anything except afraid.

  Faith/afraid: funny how similar the two words are. When we make ourselves believe things, how often is it just an attempt to hold back the fear?