“Wait. I have an idea.” He dropped to his knees, threw open the cupboard doors under the adjacent sink and looked around in there. As he’d hoped, there were two sets of valves, one for the sink and one for the dishwasher, and he began frenetically turning both the red knob and the blue one, and the spraying water slowed, lessened, then stopped. He stood. “What happened?”
Ynez tried to wipe the dripping water from her forehead, but her hands were as wet as her face and it did no good, so she tore off a length of paper towel and used it to dry her skin. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t even turn it on. I was just unloading it from this morning, and I got down to the last bowl and then all of a sudden the thing exploded. I shut the door and tried to press the buttons, but nothing worked and then I called you.” She patted her neck with the paper towel. “What took you so long, anyway?”
“I was mowing the lawn. I didn’t hear you.”
She looked at the dishwasher. “I guess we’ll have to call someone in to fix it.”
“I’ll take a look at it first, see if I can figure it out.”
“Yeah, right.”
He grinned at her. “You look pretty sexy, all wet like that.”
“Not now.”
“Why not? We used to. You could get on your hands and knees. I’ll take you from behind, milk you like a cow.”
“Let’s just get the dishwasher fixed.”
There was a loud gurgle from beneath the sink and a sickening glug from somewhere down the drain, and then all of a sudden water was flowing out from the dishwasher—not shooting out like before, but seeping under the bottom of the door onto the floor in a constant wave.
“That’s impossible,” Jorge said. “I shut off the valve.”
“I told you we should’ve bought that extended warranty,” Ynez said. “I told you.” From the laundry room at the far end of the kitchen came a clanking crashing sound and an accompanying noise of jetting water. They rushed over to see the washing machine spewing suds, its front-loading door flapping improbably open.
Jorge looked at his wife. “You’re right,” he said. “We should have.”
3
In October, he and Beth hosted a Halloween party. Hunt wasn’t much of a party guy, but once again, she drew him out of his shell and made him participate, even dressed him up like a cowboy, and to his surprise he actually had a good time.
The guest list was made up primarily of Beth’s friends, people from work, but Joel, Edward, and Jorge were there, Joel dressed as Michael Myers, Edward as a hillbilly, and Jorge as some effeminate person no one could figure out but whom he explained was the most popular member of a currently hot boy-band. “My niece suggested it,” he said lamely.
Hunt mingled and met everyone, but ended up with his friends out on the patio. Joel had taken off his Michael Myers mask, and the two of them reminisced about boyhood Halloweens where they’d scared the crap out of younger kids and harassed some of the more crotchety elderly neighbors.
“We used to do the old ‘dogshit in a burning bag’ routine,” Edward said. “There was this one asshole who would throw rocks at us every time we drove by his house. He’d be out there watering, and if we cruised down the sidewalk, he’d pick up a stone and heave it at us. He was afraid one of our bike tires would touch a microscopic corner of his lawn, so he tried to force us to drive on the other side of the street. We got him back, though. And we didn’t wait until Halloween. We used to put the flaming dogshit-in-a-bag on his porch at least once a month and the stupid fuck fell for it every time.”
Jorge grinned. “Speaking of stupid fucks, did you hear about Steve and his vandal?”
“What now?” Hunt asked. The maintenance services manager was in the process of remodeling his home, adding on a “rumpus room”—a term Hunt hadn’t heard since childhood, and one that brought about significant snickers from his fellow maintenance men. The project was supposed to have been finished long before Hunt was even hired, but Steve was such a perfectionist that there was still no end in sight.
“Some guy came in, took a dump on the floor, and beat the shit out of the walls, knocking holes in Steve’s great plasterwork. It was at least several hundred dollars’ worth of damage, but the insurance company says it’s not covered. He has to pay for the whole thing out of his own pocket.”
“Yeee doaggies!” Edward said, doing his best Jed Clampett.
“Damn insurance companies.” Joel shook his head.
Edward chuckled. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew Steve. This guy deserves it.”
Hunt and Jorge laughed.
“Still, it’s the principle of the thing. You pay money to these bastards all your life, and then when you need them, they refuse to give you the service you’ve already paid for. Am I right, Hunt?”
He held up his hands in surrender. “You won’t get any argument from me. Hell, I’m still trying to unload those Debbie Boone records.”
They all laughed.
Beth walked up. She was dressed as Pocahontas and looked so sexy that Hunt thought if there hadn’t been other people around, he would have taken her then and there. She must have been able to read his thoughts, because the smile she gave him promised that later he would be able to do exactly that. “How’s everyone enjoying the party?”
There was a chorus of approval.
Beth beamed. “Well, thank you all for coming. We appreciate it.” She took Hunt’s hand, squeezed. “I’d stay here with you if I could, but someone has to be sociable, tend to our more high-maintenance guests and make sure this party doesn’t jump the shark.” She fixed Hunt with a look of mock reproach.
He laughed and gave her a quick kiss.
“Can you wait a minute?” asked Ynez.
“Certainly,” Beth said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I just—”
“No, it’s not that.”
Behind them, the sliding glass door opened. Stacy, who knew the same people as Beth did and who’d been inside the house chatting with some of her Thompson Industries coworkers, walked over and pulled Joel’s mask down over his face again. “It’s a Halloween party,” she said. “Maintain your persona.” She was dressed as a beauty queen. “She’s Vanessa Williams,” Joel had explained when they first arrived. “I have the lesbo pictures in my wallet.”
Ynez took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “Now that we’re all here, I have an announcement to make.” She looked at Jorge, put a hand on his arm.
He nodded, smiled.
“We’re going to have a baby!”
Jorge? A baby? Hunt didn’t know about the others, but he was shocked by the news. Jorge had always seemed the least likely of any of them to have children. Joel and Stacy had Lilly, but none of the rest of them had kids, and Jorge was always defiantly unparental in his attitude toward the nieces and nephews he occasionally watched. Hunt found himself wondering if this baby was planned or an accident.
Still, he was happy for his friend, and he gathered around with the others, offering congratulations.
Jorge was beaming. “Thanks, man. Thanks.”
Edward clapped a big bear hand over his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s just hope the little guy takes after Ynez’s family, hmm?”
“I don’t like the guest room,” Beth said out of the blue.
They were eating an early dinner at the kitchen table, and Hunt looked up from his plate of turkey étouffée. “What?”
“Courtney doesn’t like it either.”
The cat rubbed against her leg, purring as though it understood.
“What are you talking about?” Hunt asked.
“Do you believe in haunted houses?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I never did. I always assumed that there was no such thing, that they were fictional, and that anyone who believed in them was probably just projecting their own neuroses on an inanimate object or had a screw loose somewhere. But…” She trailed off.
“But what?”
“The guest room. I hear things there,
” she said. “Not all the time, and not even on a regular basis… but sometimes.”
Hunt was silent.
“You’ll probably think I’m crazy—and maybe I am, maybe I’m the one who’s projecting—but I think it’s haunted.”
“Since when?”
“I don’t know. Recently.” She looked down at the table. “Since I met you.”
“It’s my fault?”
“I’m not saying that, no. But that’s when I started hearing noises. Or noticing them.”
“I’ve heard things, too,” he admitted.
“You have?”
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I thought maybe it was my imagination.”
“It wasn’t. There are noises there.”
“I still think maybe it’s my imagination.”
“Both of us? Independently? I don’t think so.” She pushed her chair away from the table. “Come on. Let’s check it out.”
Hunt looked down at his food. “Now?”
“Why not?”
“We’re eating.”
“It’ll only take a second.”
“Well, why don’t we wait until we hear a noise or something? I mean, it comes and goes, right? It’s not there all the time.”
“Let’s find out.”
Hunt sighed, wiped his hands on his napkin, stood. “Okay.”
They walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, into the darkened hall. Hunt was in the lead. He stopped for a second in the hallway, opened the guest room door, peered in, and damn if it wasn’t spooky. He didn’t know if they’d psyched themselves up for this or if their response was legitimate, but they both felt it: a stiffening of neck hairs, a subtle chill, an involuntary focus on the twin bed against the wall.
Hunt wanted to slam the door shut again. He didn’t like the fact that he kept looking at the bed, didn’t like the fact that Beth kept looking at the bed. There was nothing unusual about the frame or headboard or mattress, nothing out of the ordinary, but somehow its very plainness lent it a kind of inverse aura, made it seem more prominent and important than it should have amidst the Southwest decor of the room.
They stood there for a moment, listening, neither of them making an effort to enter the room.
“I don’t hear anything,” Hunt said.
“Me either.”
And he understood that she was afraid, that she didn’t want to go into the guest room, that she wanted to leave right now and go back to the kitchen and get as far away from the guest room—
and the bed
—as possible.
“Do you want to move?” he asked.
She sighed, and the mood was broken. “No. Besides, we wouldn’t be able to afford anything this nice. Not now.”
“Well, what should we do? Hire an exorcist?”
“No, nothing, I guess. I’ve lived with it this long, and it hasn’t harmed anything. Still…”
They both peered into the small room, and Hunt’s gaze was once again drawn to the nondescript bed.
He quickly closed the door, and, not speaking, the two of them walked back into the kitchen to finish their dinner.
4
Steve looked out his office window at the corp yard. He hated Monday mornings most of all. He used to enjoy them. This was the time when he handed out assignments, when all of his troops were assembled and he got to lord it over them, show them who was boss. But now he hated seeing all those lowlifes gathered in one place. The losers of the world worked for the county: white trash and drunken Indians, angry spades and dumb wetbacks. There was even one worthless gook. And the bitch of it was, he couldn’t fire any of them. There was a long drawn-out appeals process for any employee who was terminated, and at the end of the process, for fear of lawsuits, the county always caved and reinstated the employee with back pay.
In the yard, Edward Stack said something loudly but unintelligibly that was greeted with howls of laughter by the gathered workers. Stack, as usual, lifted his hands to acknowledge the praise in that annoying way he had.
At the administrative level, there was talk of contracting out tree trimming, and Steve was all for it. Hell, if they could outsource the entire workforce of maintenance services, that would be great. He’d get to deal with vendors instead of employees, just tell business owners when their men were doing a crappy job and let them deal with the shitwork of telling the grunts. He’d sit here and shuffle papers and be taken to fancy lunches by contractors desperately wanting to get on the gravy train.
The phone on his desk rang, and he picked it up, swiveling his dirty chair away from the window. “Corp yard. Steve Nash speaking.”
“Mr. Nash!” Steve recognized the voice. It was that insurance agent, the one who’d called last night. Sunday night. The one who’d shown up on his doorstep Saturday morning with a briefcase full of brochures and a line of smooth salesman patter. The one who’d been pressuring him to purchase additional homeowner’s insurance for damn near a week now. He didn’t know how the man had gotten his work number, but he didn’t appreciate being harassed during business hours, and he said bluntly, “I’m not interested,” and hung up the phone.
It rang again, instantly.
“Mr. Nash,” the agent said in a voice at once soothing and chiding.
“Look, I told you. I’m not interested in buying any more insurance. Now stop calling me.”
“You’re playing with fire here, Mr. Nash. Literally. None of the new construction is covered under your existing homeowner’s policy. You need expanded coverage—”
“When it’s done I’ll get it covered. I’m not shelling out good money for a frame and plywood and Sheetrock.”
“And wiring and plumbing…”
“I told you. No. Besides, I’ve read my policy and the addition is covered. In fact, I’ve already filed a claim with my insurance company over water damage. So I’m not looking for anything else.”
“Your existing policy provides only partial limited coverage.”
“It’s good enough for me.”
“But you’ve invested much more in your rumpus room than the amount it would take to fully insure it,” the agent said smoothly. “Not to mention all of the labor and man hours.”
“I’m not buying anything else. Not now.”
“It would behoove you to purchase some hazard insurance as well, should some sort of accident befall you as you work on, say, the roof?”
“Good-bye,” Steve said firmly. “And don’t call back again.” He hung up the phone. Swiveling in his chair, he frowned as he looked out the window. A few of the crews had already left, but the majority of men were milling around the open garage door where the coffeepot was located. Two of the men in the crowd he didn’t recognize, however—men who didn’t belong, who shouldn’t be there.
Burly men in Humphrey Bogart hats.
His blood ran cold as he recalled the night when he’d seen that figure in the addition. He’d almost convinced himself that it hadn’t happened, that it had been a figment of his imagination, but he and Nina had both heard noises and something had caused them, and before he’d flipped on the lights he’d seen a man in the corner who looked exactly like—
Where did they go?
Frowning, Steve stood, practically pressing his face against the window. The men were gone. Both of them. One moment they’d been in the middle of that group of workers by the door of the garage, then he blinked and they’d disappeared. He shifted to the right, looking sideways through the glass, then turned the opposite way, but saw no sign of either of the men.
That was impossible. They could not have just vanished into thin air. Yet they were nowhere in the corp yard. Maybe they were in the garage. Yeah. That was it. They’d gone into the garage and that’s why he couldn’t see them.
But he didn’t want to go over and check; didn’t want to ask any of the other men to find out for sure.
Steve turned away from the window, sat back down in h
is chair. The phone on his desk rang—the insurance agent again—and he picked up the handset and dropped it back into its cradle without answering. He thought of the tequila bottles and piss puddles and piles of human shit that he’d found in his unfinished rumpus room.
Maybe he should buy additional insurance.
No. He straightened in his seat. There was no need. He already had insurance. All the insurance he needed.
He kept it in the nightstand next to his bed.
And he had plenty of ammo for it, too.
5
Joel had always heard that the majority of traffic accidents occurred in parking lots, but he’d never seen any evidence that that was the case. Most of the accidents he’d seen in his life took place in or around intersections.
Insurance company propaganda, he’d assumed.
His first accident since he was a teenager, however, occurred in the school parking lot. He was leaving late as usual—a group of students in his Wednesday afternoon Principles of American Government class always stayed after to discuss current events with him—and he decided to take a shortcut through the student lot instead of driving back through the faculty lot exit and then around the east side of the campus.
The car backed right into him.
He was traveling up one of the east-west rows, keeping a wary eye out for suddenly lit brake lights, well aware of the fact that many first-year students, boys in particular, acted like they were in thirteenth grade rather than college and peeled out of the parking lot in a juvenile attempt to impress their peers, when a clunky old Dodge abruptly pulled out of its spot on his right and hit his front passenger door. It wasn’t a hard hit, more of a gentle tap, but the car was a metal behemoth from Detroit’s golden age, and he knew without even looking that his Toyota had probably sustained damage.
He stopped where he was and immediately got out of the vehicle. The other driver did, too. She was Vietnamese, and when he walked back to inspect the damage she was shaking like a leaf. He could see visible perspiration above her upper lip, like a shiny mustache. As he’d feared, there was a noticeable dent on the lower half of his passenger door. Her bumper and trunk were okay, but the Dodge’s right rear taillight had been smashed.
THE POLICY Page 8
