Instead of the usual talk about Mike’s parents, they discussed what movies were coming out that week and which were worth seeing. Dennis came in and out of the conversation as he struggled with the rental truck. He shushed Mike while maneuvering up the curved roads to the apartment building. They crested the hill intact and Dennis parked in front of the stairs.
“Well,” he said as they undid the gate on the back of the truck, “I guess I get first pick on where my stuff goes.” The gate rumbled upward and he jumped into the back of the truck. “Let’s start with the couch.” They wrestled it down.
Sirens sounded in the distance. As they carried the couch onto the sidewalk, the wail grew louder.
“I think it’s coming up here.”
The ambulance roared into view. A police cruiser was behind it. Both screeched to a halt in front of the truck and two EMTs sprinted up the steps toward the apartment. The cruiser doors opened and two officers followed.
Dennis sat his end of the couch down and sprinted after them.
“Shit. Dennis!” Mike fought his end to the ground and followed.
A tide of bodies pressed into him as he entered the lobby, a sea of anxious faces staring down the hall. Mike caught up to Dennis as he pushed his way through.
“What’s going on?” Dennis asked.
“It’s Lloyd,” someone said. “He’s—”
“Put it down, Mr. Trent.” One of the cops circled through Mike’s view. He craned his neck to get a better look.
The EMTs crouched on the ground and pulled gauze from their bags. The cops stood in a defensive position, their hands hovering over their guns. Ahead of them a thin man, more bone than flesh, paced back and forth in the hallway. He was shirtless, his skin striped with red. His bare feet tracked blood in circles on the tiled floor.
He waved a butcher knife in front of him.
“Lloyd, please,” someone pleaded.
“They’re everywhere.” He motioned with the knife.
“Don’t you see? They’re crawling all over me. They’re so goddamned filthy.” He pressed the knife against his forearm and sliced off a thin ribbon of flesh. It hit the ground with a wet slap and blood drowned his arm.
Someone screamed.
“Fuck!” Dennis turned away.
Mike didn’t want to look, but his eyes were drawn to the scene like magnets.
The cops made a move toward Lloyd. He waved the knife again and they hesitated.
“There are no bugs, Lloyd,” one of them yelled. “I swear it.”
The sight of blood, the tightness of bodies pressing in around him, the screaming—it was too much for Mike. His stomach lurched one way, then the other. Acid bit at the back of his tongue and the bitterness of his coffee bubbled up into his mouth. He pushed away from the crowd and emptied his stomach onto the floor.
“They’re not just bugs.” Lloyd pushed hair from his eyes, streaking his face with red. “They’re fucking filthy cockroaches. AND THEY WON’T GO AWAY.” He dug the knife into his arm again. The loud scrape of metal on bone echoed down the hall. Blood poured onto the floor like a water hose running and his arm dangled limp to his side.
The cops rushed in, tackled him to the ground and ripped the knife from him. He screamed, thrashed, painted the floor with his blood. The EMTs produced a needle. He bit at one of them. A cop wrenched his head back.
The injection only took seconds to work. When he was out they went to work bandaging his wounds.
After they had stopped most of the bleeding they wheeled him to the ambulance and sped off. The police took statements and searched his open apartment. The gruesome show was over and the crowd disappeared behind closed doors.
Dennis walked a tall redheaded woman to the elevator. Mike stared at the blood on the floor. His face had gone bone-white and cold. The image of red-on-white blurred into and out of focus.
Is this what we’re filled with?
The blood stole him, pulled him into its pattern. The walls melted away and he was left in darkness.
A pool of light washed in, gleaming across the porcelain of a bathtub. Steam rose like fingers from the water. The red-on-white branched out over the tub, into the cracks of the tile on the walls and floor. In the water a crimson flower bloomed and grew until it pressed against the tub’s walls. It kept growing, forcing bucketfuls of bloody water over the sides and across the floor, under the doorway, down the hall, staining the tan carpet as it made its way to the stairs, blossoming wider as it covered the walls of the house, so much blood, he would have never guessed that she had had so much blood inside of that tiny body, that she—
Dennis squeezed the back of his neck. “You alright?”
“Huh? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even know the guy, right?”
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Mike was silent.
“Hey. Let’s get out of here and let them clean the hall up. We can go get a bite to eat or something and then unpack later.”
“I don’t think I could eat anything right now.”
“Still…”
“Oh. Yeah. Okay.”
Mike headed out the door. Dennis took one last look at the hallway before following him.
No one noticed the fat red cockroach scurry through the blood and under Lloyd’s door.
* * *
The mop bucket squeaked like a dying rodent as it wound its way down the hall. The front wheel was warped and Reynaldo had to fight to keep it from slamming into the walls. He ground his teeth together as it squeaked along. He hated that sound more than anything, more than he hated his wife’s nagging or his children fighting. No matter how many times he tried to repair it, or how many times he begged Rudy for a new bucket, he was always left listening to the bent wheel.
It could be worse, he reminded himself. He could be back in Juarez, shoveling shit from clogged toilets at pennies a day for gringo tourists. At least the plumbing worked here and his pay was decent. Not great, still below minimum wage, but under the table. Rent was free, so that was something. Not bad for an illegal groundskeeper.
Groundskeeper? Fucking janitor is more like it. Most of his time was spent cleaning up messes. The closest he came to “groundskeeping” was cleaning the pool and supervising the landscaping crew that maintained the yard. Lately, it had mostly been the messes. They were often mundane—a burst pipe, a leaky roof—but sometimes they were strange, like today. Too many of those involved blood.
He plunged his mop into the suds and splashed a figure eight on the tile. At least it was only blood this time. He knew how lucky he had been last time. He had buried the garbage bag in the field with Mr. Henry’s clothes. He never opened it to see what was inside; he had long ago stopped being curious.
When the hall was clean he pushed the bucket back to the elevator and down into the basement. There he dumped the contents into a large sink. He turned off the light, undid the locks on a forgotten door, sat in a cold steel chair, and lit a cigar. It had been a long week and he needed this.
He reclined in the dark, letting the cigar’s earthy taste roll around in his mouth, and waited. He grew impatient and almost left, but when the cigar was down to a stub his nose was tickled with a light breeze of cologne.
“Darling,” he whispered as cold lips descended on him.
Chapter Five
Dennis fell into the couch and let the cushions swallow him. Most of his things were inside but didn’t even fill half of the apartment.
Mike inched his way to the floor and leaned against the couch. He was drenched in sweat and fought to catch his breath. “Please tell me we’re done.”
“We’re done.”
They sat for a few minutes and relaxed. A knock at the door made them both sigh.
“Well?” Dennis tapped the back of Mike’s head with the toe of his shoe. “You gonna answer your door?”
Mike shuffled over and opened it. A plate of brownies was shoved into his arms.
“Welcome to the building.” A stocky woman in a jogging suit stepped into the apartment. Her brown hair was pulled into a ponytail and a smile almost split her face in two. She looked to Mike to be around his mother’s age, but in much better shape. “I’m Margot, in 328. Kind of the unofficial welcoming committee.”
“Uh, hi. I’m Mike. This is Dennis.” She turned to Dennis and waved and Mike’s eyes were drawn to the sway of her breasts.
Dennis stood. “Hi, Margot. Nice to meet you. Thanks for the brownies.”
“My pleasure.” She turned back to Mike and caught him staring at her chest.
He snapped his eyes up and prepared to apologize. The corner of her mouth turned and Mike was confused. He thought she looked a little like one of the nymphs in the courtyard.
“I love to bake,” she went on, her eyes boring into his. “Anytime you wanna come by, I’ll whip something up for you.”
Mike swallowed. “Uh…great. Yeah. We’ll, uh, we’ll do that.”
“Good. Now, I really gotta be going. I just wanted to introduce myself and welcome y’all here. It was nice meeting you boys.” She ran her hand along Mike’s shoulder on her way out.
He shut the door behind her and grinned. “She was nice.”
“Yep.” Dennis snatched the plate of brownies from him and crammed one into his mouth. “You flirt. Mmmmm. Good.”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
“Don’t be ashamed. I like that move.”
“Move?”
“Yeah. Letting her catch you drool over her tits. That’s good.”
“I didn’t—”
“Very subtle.”
“So, I don’t need to be home for a few hours.” Mike’s voice cracked as he changed the subject. “What do you want to do?”
Dennis returned to the couch. “Man, I just want to lay here for a while. I gotta go get the rest of my shit later.”
“Why didn’t you pack it all in the truck?”
“Huh. I don’t know. Maybe because someone else’s furniture was supposed to be crammed in there.”
“Why don’t you show me around? I haven’t seen the pool, or the laundry room, or—”
“C’mon, man. Let me rest.”
“Yeah, but I haven’t—”
“Just go look around. You don’t need me holding your hand.”
Mike nodded. “Fine.”
* * *
The stairwell swayed under him. The steps rose and fell like heavy breathing and the walls twisted and swelled. Mike grabbed the railing and steadied himself. Blinked twice. Attempted to focus.
He had avoided the elevator because of its shaking and jostling, but the stairs were worse. Whoever had originally laid out the tile and painted the walls must have been a fan of MC Escher. The stairs were an odd jumble of black and gray tiles assembled with no known geometric pattern, while the walls were the same faded and stained yellow as the rest of the building. The difference here was that there were spirals painted on the wall in a slightly different shade of yellow; no doubt someone’s misguided idea of art deco. Add to all of this a single, filthy yellow bulb per floor and the effect was startling.
He fumed at Dennis’ remark and the nauseating stairwell just worsened his mood.
Fuck him. What if I don’t move
into this shit hole? Yeah, the apartment is great, but the building…
And do I want to live with someone like Dennis that expects—
Expects what?
Expects him to act his age and start taking care of himself. He knew that no matter how harsh Dennis was at times, he always had Mike’s best interests at heart. Mike just didn’t know how to take responsibility for himself. The idea of it turned his stomach.
At the second floor he had had enough and decided to take his chances with the elevator. The heavy metal door screeched into the hall, its black trail carving deeper into the floor. He stepped out and had to push hard to shut it behind him. He stopped to catch his breath and cursed himself for the shape he was in.
He passed an open apartment and couldn’t help but peek inside. A TV tray sat covered in dishes, a large, shirtless man behind it shoveling food into his mouth. His head was shaved and he wore a salt and pepper goatee. Tattoos ran up and down his arms, over his chest and back. Mike thought he saw a swastika, but sprinted off when the man turned toward him and so couldn’t be sure.
He pressed the elevator’s button and listened to the sounds of the building as he waited. The box hummed its way down the shaft. Laughter echoed behind one of the doors. The faint sounds of a talk show murmured from the skinhead’s open apartment. Music played somewhere, gentle notes of piano accented with violin. The deep bass rhythm of feet pounded up the stairwell.
The elevator doors opened. He stepped inside and almost pushed the button for the ground floor, but hesitated when he saw “5.” Wasn’t the building only three floors?
Of course. The tower. It was higher than the rest of the building. Curious what kind of view it offered, he pressed its button.
He regretted it as the box struggled to climb through the shaft. It finally ground to a halt and the doors split apart to reveal a small room. He stepped inside, shuffling through bits of drywall and kicking up clouds of white dust. Long beams of sunlight danced through the shadows. Mike took three steps into the room and paused. What he had thought was a wall to his right was nothing more than a giant piece of filthy white canvas nailed to the ceiling.
He pulled the edge away from the wall. Through tiny gaps between crisscrossed two-by-fours, he saw the back of a red sofa splotched with mildew. Bits of stuffing escaped here and there. It sat facing another sheet of canvas. This one breathed, its contracting and expanding hinting at an open window somewhere beyond it.
Where would that window be? He tried to get his bearings. Imagined the front of the building. Was there a window there? No, it was just brick. The elevator was in an alcove positioned to the left of the front doors. He had taken a left from the elevator, so would the window open onto the back of the building? Why would a window open onto that field? And whose couch was that?
Not one for puzzles, he climbed back into the box.
Once on the ground floor, he stepped outside and made his way through the courtyard, hands in his pockets and head down to avoid the statues. He felt ridiculous doing so, but the values his parents had driven into him ran deep. To think lustful thoughts was to invite guilt and he didn’t want to be caught doing so in the open.