“Hey, nice job,” she said. “Brodie glanced at it on his way out and said it was fine. But you mind sticking around in case the desk has any issues?”
“Yeah, actually I do mind. Can’t they just call me?”
“What, you have a hot date or something?”
I shrugged. This is where my relationship with Tina was altogether too complicated—moral of story: never get involved with a woman who might end up being your boss—and I thought about keeping my mouth shut. Then again, having started work at the ungodly hour of 8:38, I felt the
Eagle-Examiner
had gotten enough of my time for one day.
“Yeah, maybe I do,” I said.
“Oh, what, with that mousy little thing in the library? What’s her name, anyway? Minnie? Maisy?”
Tina knew Kira’s name, of course. She was obviously trying to get a rise out of me, and I wasn’t going to take the bait. Don’t engage, don’t engage, don’t engage …
“You get her to go out with you by offering a wedge of cheese or something?” Tina asked. “You know, peanut butter works better. Or, wait, you’re using those little glue traps, aren’t you? Very humane of you.”
I kept my jaw clenched. She kept prodding: “Just to warn you, some Irish women don’t age well. I’m sure she looks fine now, but by the time she’s forty, she’ll have more wrinkles than a linen suit.”
Don’t engage, don’t engage, don’t engage …
“What do you see in her, anyway?” Tina asked.
Unable to hold myself in check any longer, I fired back, “I see someone who doesn’t try to screw with my head all the time and is actually interested in a normal, steady relationship. I see someone who doesn’t have a million ridiculous issues about commitment. I see someone who isn’t afraid to fall in love just because she may have failed at it in the past.”
Tina had been smiling—albeit maliciously—when she was making her mouse jokes. But now the smile had been replaced by this hard mask.
“Great,” she snarled. “Normal. Committed. Have fun with that, big guy. Does she make you turn the lights out during sex? Keep her eyes closed the whole time?”
I was going for blood now: “Actually, we mostly do it in public places. She likes it when people watch. She says it makes the orgasms better. Wanna bring your pom-poms sometime? Cheer us on?”
“If you’re involved? I think I’d rather watch bowling on TV. More action.”
I inhaled to respond—something about how the pins probably stood a better chance of getting knocked up than her—then stopped myself. I just couldn’t believe the venom that was coming out of my mouth. Why was I trying to hurt her? For whatever might have happened between Tina and I—and it had been too stunted and strained to ever really find out what it was—we were still friends, or something, at one point. We had cared about each other, or at least I thought we did.
Now here we were, going after each other like we were on opposite sides of the table in a divorce lawyer’s office, trying to singe each other’s skin with our words.
She was standing there, braced, like she was waiting for the next salvo. Instead, I said, “Tina, what the hell? Can’t we at least be civil to each other?”
“Relax. I’m just busting your chops. Don’t take it so seriously. There’s no need to get all girly on me.”
“Ah, so you’re not at all upset that I started dating Kira? Because, you know, the way you’ve been acting around me lately I would beg to differ.”
“What are you talking about?” she said, the mask still in place. “Because I asked you to stay late tonight rather than … whatever you were going to do?”
“Tina, we barely talk anymore…”
“You think I really care that much what you do after work? Don’t flatter yourself. Look, you’re a damn good reporter—my best, if you have to know. That’s the only thing that matters to me. Whatever chick you’re bouncing on your balls is none of my business.”
“You’re … you’re really going to play that game?”
“It’s no game, stud,” she said. “Anyhow, since you’re not sticking around, I have to. Someone has to make sure the desk doesn’t massacre this thing. Have a nice night. Just keep your cell on, okay?”
She walked away without bothering to hear my answer.
* * *
I was in such a foul mood about Tina, I forgot all about dinner—which would prove to be something of a mistake—and instead talked Kira into leaving five minutes early. It was either that or lure her into making out in Tina’s office. And I figured that would just make things worse.
We got in my Malibu and started driving toward an address just off University Avenue. I half expected she might have changed into after-work garb—Kira seemed to celebrate Halloween roughly a hundred times a year—but she was still in the dark pink sweater set she had worn to work.
“So tell me about this party we’re going to,” I said as I maneuvered out of the parking garage.
“Well, it’s hosted by this guy named Powell.”
“Powell? Is that his first name or his last name?”
“Actually, his name is Paul,” Kira said. “But he prefers people pronounce it Powell. Like he’s foreign. He’s really from Mahwah. I guess he thinks it gives him mystique.”
“Ah, mystique.”
“Yeah, he’s a bit of a character.”
“You don’t say.”
“Wait until you meet him,” she said, lightly tracing the bones of my right hand with her fingers. “He is getting a Ph.D. in what he calls ‘Death Studies.’”
“I didn’t realize Rutgers-Newark offered courses in Death Studies.”
“They didn’t until Powell came along. I’m not sure how he talked them into it. He’s basically just making it up as he goes along. He takes courses from the School of Criminal Justice, the Law School, even the Nursing School.”
“The
nursing
school has a course on death?”
“Oh, I have no idea. I met him because he was taking a library sciences class at the New Brunswick campus. I think maybe he just likes being a student.”
“I’m sure his parents love that,” I said.
“I think they have enough money that it doesn’t really matter.”
“Mmm,” I said, and left it at that. A guy with my background couldn’t exactly make a wisecrack about the Lucky Sperm Club simply because I didn’t have a trust fund waiting for me.
We drove until I pulled up in front of a five- or six-story industrial-looking building badly in need of a paint job. A hundred years ago it might have been some kind of flourishing factory. But now it was dark and appeared to be abandoned.
“What is this place?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s the coolest thing. It’s this loft. I think the lower floors are still being renovated by someone who is going to turn it into condos or something. But they started with the top floor and that’s where Powell lives.”
An artist’s loft. In Newark. Could trendy, overpriced boutiques be far behind?
We rode a creaky elevator up to the top floor, which, sure enough, looked like it had been transplanted from Greenwich Village, with high ceilings, hardwood floors, and exposed brick. There were no lights on, just votive candles set in the broad windowsills. Most of the furnishings—what little I could detect in the dark—were milk crates that had been creatively stacked together. I detected a few life-forms sprawled on pillows and blankets on the floor. It was all very bohemian.
“Welcome,” I heard someone say. It was the voice of a man trying to sound like Vincent Price but failing.
“Hi, Powell!” Kira chirped out.
A young man with perfectly mussed dark brown hair and black eyeliner approached and kissed Kira on the cheek. He was about my height but scrawny and ghostly pale, perhaps with the aid of foundation makeup. He wore skinny black jeans and a tight black T-shirt and also had a variety of piercings on his face and ears. His neck and arms were festooned with tattoos, not that I could discern the significance of any of them. He reached out to shake my hand, and I saw he was wearing black nail polish. It was a look that used to be called goth. Now maybe it’s called emo. My parent’s generation would have just called him a freak.
But I’m open-minded enough to give anyone a try. And, hey, freaks are fun.
“I’m Powell,” he said.
“Powell, this is Carter, he works at the paper with me,” Kira said.
I couldn’t help myself: “Powell. What an unusual name. Spell it for me.”
Kira stuck an elbow in my side as he said, “P-A-U-L.”
“Isn’t that … Paul?” I asked innocently.
“Yes, but it’s pronounced Powell.”
“How exotic,” I said. And I knew—because I was a few years older than him and dressed like one of those squares who didn’t understand his music—he couldn’t tell that I was messing with him.
“Come in,” he said. “Can I offer you something to drink? We have beer and wine or, if you’re not afraid, we also have what the French would call
la fée verte—
the green fairy.”
If I’m not afraid?
I thought. I felt like telling skinny jeans boy that I trafficked in a part of Newark that was far more frightening than anything doled out by some hundred-and-forty-five-pound guy who wore eyeliner. But that might get our relationship off to a bad start. So I just said: “Sure. I’ll try some of your poison.”
“Kira?”
“Of course!” she said.
Paul/Powell led us over to a stack of milk crates that was serving as a bar. From one of the crates, he extracted a bottle of mint green liquid that was either absinthe or mouthwash. From another crate, he removed two glasses, each of which had a bubblelike bulge toward the bottom, which he filled with the liquid. Then he produced a flat utensil that reminded me of a pie cutter—albeit with holes in it—a jar with cubes of sugar, a lighter, and a bottle of Dasani water.
He did this all with great flair—Paul/Powell was clearly one for the dramatic—then, in that Vincent Price voice, announced, “You might want to stand back.”
He positioned the pie cutter over one of the glasses, placed a sugar cube on top of it, then sparked the lighter. The sugar must have been treated with something because it caught fire, much to the delight of Kira, who started clapping. He let it burn for a moment or two, then dumped it into the glass—which also went aflame.
He quickly doused the flame with a shot of Dasani water, then handed it to Kira. “Ladies first,” he said, before performing the same magic trick on my drink.
As he handed me the concoction, he said, “You know, legend has it this is what van Gogh was drinking when he cut off his ear.”
“I’ll try to stay away from sharp objects,” I said, accepting it. “
Prost.
”
I downed a large gulp. It tasted kind of like burnt licorice. But all things considered, it went down pretty smoothly. So did the second one. Kira and I had joined the party, which included maybe ten other people arrayed on pillows. All of them were younger than me, much more casually dressed, and talked to me like I was their father. In truth, it didn’t bother me because without anything in my stomach, the alcohol in the absinthe had temporarily muddied most of the synapses in my brain.
Sometime during the third drink, I decided that Paul/Powell—for as ridiculous as he looked, talked, and acted—was actually a pretty good guy, full of useful information. He told me, for example, that of all the currently accepted methods of state-sponsored execution, the firing squad was actually considered the most humane. (“They’re dead before they hit the ground,” he said cheerily.)
I wound up telling him about Darius Kipps and how I had my suspicion whether he had really killed himself. At the end of it, he said, “Well, you want to go have a look?”
“A look at what?”
“At this dude.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I have a key,” he said.
“To what?”
“To the Essex County Medical Examiner’s Office.”
* * *
As the party died down and the other guests went home, Paul/Powell explained how this had come to be. His “Death Studies” Ph.D. was, technically, in the School of Arts and Sciences, but it was multidisciplinary, looking at death through a variety of lenses, from social to financial to spiritual to literary. As such, it involved a lot of external study and cooperative learning experiences—including an internship at the Essex County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“It’s a perfect place to study the physical manifestation of the expiratory process at its end stage,” he informed me.
“You mean, it’s a good place to see dead people?” I translated.
“Exactly!” he said, gleefully.
Apparently, Paul/Powell liked hanging out with stiffs so much that he didn’t get enough of it during the day. So he sometimes snuck in late at night to spend time with them. He called it research. I called it creepy. Then again, I wasn’t the guy with “D” “E” “A” “T” and “H” tattooed onto the fingers of my left hand.
He wasn’t supposed to have a key, of course—they don’t just hand those out to interns. He explained that he and a janitor had made a swap: a copy of a key in exchange for some embalming fluid he had swiped from a funeral home. Believe me, this is
not
something I’ve experienced personally, but apparently when you dip a marijuana cigarette in embalming fluid, it gives it certain psychotic effects.
It also means you’re smoking chemicals that are only put in dead people for a very good reason. But, hey, to each his own.
So Paul/Powell had a key to the Essex County Medical Examiner’s Office. It was all very shady and nefarious, and I’m sure had I been remotely sober, I could have come out with dozens of very good reasons why a responsible reporter for the state’s largest newspaper should not take advantage of it.
Except, of course, I had a head full of absinthe; and I had wild-child Kira goading me on, because to her it seemed like a fine adventure; and, well, to be honest, it was actually Paul/Powell who sealed the deal when he taunted, “Yeah, man, we can go see him. Unless you’re, you know, afraid of corpses at night.”
So, really, I had no choice. We waited to shove off until midnight, when the place would be empty. According to Paul/Powell, the midnight to 8:00
A.M.
security detail—which he, naturally, referred to as “the graveyard shift”—had been axed in some recent budget cuts. In theory, the Essex County Police were supposed to have added the office to their patrol. But Paul/Powell said he had never seen them.