The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (15 page)

In the middle of this glory I perched on a workbench and stared at a row of three coffin freezers stuffed full of rags, bits of bedding, carpet, sofa cushions, paper towels, and all the other debris soaked in every effluvium of the human body that gets removed from trauma scenes. Biohazardous material awaiting transfer to Saniwaste, then to be trucked to Utah, where such things are burned en masse.

Or so I read in the Saniwaste brochure I'd found on a rack in the office. It was that or the back issues of
Entertainment Weekly
in the john. Is it a shock the brochures won out?

I slid off the edge of the bench and walked around. I poked at a machine that, according to another brochure, recycled formalin. I wondered what they did with the specimens they removed from the formalin before they processed it. The eyeballs, biopsy tissues, amputations, perforated intestine and whatever that had been preserved in jars of the stuff, the material the brochure referred to as
-pathology.
I wandered to the window and looked across the street at one of the large dogs patrolling its patch of asphalt. Well, that would be one way of getting rid of the stuff. But they probably ship it to Utah with the rest of the waste.

I went back in the office and turned the TV on and flipped a couple channels and turned it off. I moved the mouse around on the computer, thought about looking at some porn, imagined the implications of jerking off in that particular environment, and discarded the idea. All I needed was another disturbing mental image running around my brain banging at the walls.

Thinking about disturbing mental images made me think about disturbing mental images.

That sucked.

I sat on the edge of the twin bed that was parked in the corner of the office doing duty as a cot. A regular cot being, one assumes, out of the question for Po Sin's needs. I looked at the clock. It was just after midnight. I tried to remember the last time I'd been up that late. Crap, I tried to remember the last time I'd been up past nine
PM.
It'd been awhile.

It's not like it's a mystery or anything, all the sleep.

Sleeping was just easier than being awake.

So why fight it?

I curled up and stopped fighting. A daily ritual of the last year. Giving up.

Hello, you've reached Clean Team. We're currently out of the office on a job. If you have an emergency we can help you with, please call 1-888-256-8326. That's 1-888-CLN-TEAM. We'll be there for you.

Beeeeeep.

—Um, hi, this is, uh, this is Soledad Nye. The woman in Malibu. You cleaned my dad's mess? I mean, oh fuck, that was horrible. You cleaned the house. Anyway. I was hoping I could get in touch with one of your employees. Web. I wanted to talk to him about … anyway. My number, well, he should call me on my cell. The number. Hang on.

I didn't quite kill myself when I jerked out of sleep and slammed my already damaged head into the shelf that hung too low over the bed, but I came close enough that I had to crawl across the floor to answer the phone on the office desk.

—Hello? Hello? Crap! Crap!

—Uh, Web?

—Yeah, yeah, it's me. Oh fucking crap! Jesus.

—Are you OK?

—Yeah, I just kind of, crap, banged my head really hard.

I sat on the floor, back against the side of the desk, phone to my ear, hand clapped over the brand-new lump rising from my head.

—Do you need some ice?

—Sure, yeah, that would be great.

There was some silence.

She cleared her throat.

—Web, you know I'm not there to actually get you the ice, right?

I blinked my eyes a few times, tried to bring the face of the liquid crystal clock on the wall into focus.

—Yeah, I know that. I was being funny.

—Or not.

—Yes, well, being not funny is more my forte.

—I noticed.

The clock straightened out for me. 12:32
AM.

—Yes, it's good of you to call my place of work to leave a message that, I can only assume, would have been meant to make clear my lack of humorousness. I'm flattered by the attention. Is there anything else I can do for you now that you have not laughed at me.

—Oh, I've laughed at you.

I took my hand from my head and looked at it. No blood. What luck.
—At
me. Just not
with
me.

—You never know, stranger things have happened.

—Indeed.

I sat there and held the phone. She, I imagine, did the same. I have, I also imagine, less patience than she. Less patience, it's safe to say than most normal people. Therefore, I cracked first.

—So, Soledad.

Note that the first time I spoke her name out loud I did it without stuttering or squeaking into a register higher than Tiny Tim's. A memory I treasure with some pride. A lesser man would have embarrassed himself with some verbal tic. Not I.

—So, Soledad. Why the fuck are you calling?

—Um, right. Well, I'd like to say I'm calling to ask if you want to go grab a coffee or something traditionally ambiguous and noncommittal.

Observe how I remain aloof and calm.

—But that's not the case?

—Nooo.

—The case is?

—The case is. I need a favor.

A favor? She's in need? And yet, not a tremor in my voice.

—The favor is?

—The favor is, well, I need something cleaned.

But of course. Was there ever any doubt. My janitorial expertise is required. L.L. would be so proud.

But I'm no woman's flunky.

—What needs to be cleaned, when?

—A room. Now.

I looked at the clock again.
12:35
AM.
Clean a room? At 12:35
AM. I
s she out of her fucking mind? Does she think I'm an absolute tool?

—Where are you?

Where she was, of course, was that motel. What was in the room, of course, was that blood. Who was with her, of course, was the guy trying to out-asshole me.

A title I was ready to relinquish in light of the butterfly knife he flashed at me.

If that all rings a bell.

The guy with the fauxhawk showed me his blade, a slight crust of dry blood gummed at the hilt.

—Say that again? Say it. About to go Bruce Lee on your ass here, you keep talking about my moms.

I put my back to the door and shifted the carrier of cleaning gear so that I held it in front of me.

—Hey no, all done, I'm not saying anything.

He took a step, twirled the knife.

—I fucking thought not, asshole.

—Did it hurt?

He stopped walking, the knife stopped twirling.

—What?

I spoke very slowly.

—When. You. Thought. Did it hurt? Like because you're not good at it, I mean.

He slammed his forearm across my throat, pinning me to the door, the point of the knife poking my cheek.

—Asshole! I said shut the fuck up! I said it was a wrap!

I thought about bringing up the carrier and shoving it into his gut, but the last time I'd fought anyone other than Chev was in junior high. And that was scrawny Dillard Hayes who'd made some lame joke about Chev not having a mom and I'd gone whacko about it. And I got the shit kicked out of me. And Dillard didn't have a knife.

So I tried diplomacy instead.

—No, you didn't actually tell me to
shut the fuck up.
And you certainly didn't say anything as lame as—GAH!

No,
he
didn't say GAH!
I
said GAH! Or, rather, I kind of barked GAH when he drove his knee into what was meant to be my balls, but was actually the carrier, which then hit my balls.

—GAH! GAH!

He did it twice more. If that didn't communicate.

The bathroom door swung open and Soledad came out toweling her hands dry.

—Jaime!

This seemingly directed at the fauxhawk dude about to put his knee on the money for the fourth time.

He let go of me and turned.

—What! What!

I dropped to the floor and tried to figure out how breathing worked.

Soledad came and kneeled next to me.

—What the hell, Jaime?

Jaime waved his knife.

—He was being an asshole, just like you said he would be!

She put a hand on the side of my face.

—I said he might
act like an asshole
and you needed to be chill.

He pointed the knife at me.

—Why do I have to be chill when he's being the asshole?

She shook her head, looked at me, her face all but hid in the long curls of hair falling around it.

—You OK?

I squirted more tears and kept my hands jammed in my crotch by way of an answer.

Jaime came and leaned over her and looked down at me.

—Besides, he deserved it for being an asshole at your house today.

She looked up at him.

—He wasn't. Fuck, Jaime, he was trying to make me laugh.

He raised his hands over his head.

—See! That's sick, man. Your dad offs himself, blows his fucking brains all over, and this asshole tries to make it funny? That's sick shit.

She stared at him, shook her head.

He raised his shoulders.

—What? What did I say? He's the one made jokes about your dad eating a bullet. Why'm I getting bitch looks?

She looked at the floor.

—Just shut up. Shut up and have a drink.

—What'd I do?

She put fingertips to her forehead.

—Please, Jaime. Just. Chill and have a drink. Please.

He reversed the gesture with his wrist and thumb, folding the knife and tucking it back in its sheath.

—Fine. Whatever. Just want people to remember, this whole production,
it's my deal. We got a schedule to keep to here and I don't like falling behind.

He walked to the room's lone chair, almonds popping under the heels of his chrome-studded ankle boots, took a seat, and picked up a white plastic shopping bag from the floor.

—So you just get the asshole up to speed and on set. I want to roll this thing and wrap.

He reached in the bag and pulled out an airline bottle of Malibu rum.

—Incidentals keep popping up and throwing my budget to shit.

I pointed at him.

—Let me guess, you're an actor, but what you really want to do is direct?

He drained the bottle and threw it across the room and it bounced off my forehead.

—Fuck you, asshole, I'm a fucking producer.

Soledad closed her eyes, shook her head, opened her eyes, and looked at me.

—Web, meet my brother Jaime.

—It's not as bad as it looks.

I sat on the closed lid of the toilet, the plastic bag of ice she got from the machine by the motel office resting between my thighs.

—See, the funny thing about that statement is the fact that it looks so very
very
bad, that there is ample room for it to be not as bad as it
looks
and still be chronically fucked up.

She took the wet hand towel from my forehead.

—I know. Still. It's not as bad as it looks.

I looked at the blood on the towel in her hand.

—Well then, that explains all the relief pouring over me at this moment.

She bent and peered at the gash in my forehead, reopened when Jaime kneed me and I bit the floor.

—This should be stitched up. Want me to take a crack at it?

—What? No. What the hell with people who don't have any medical training at all wanting to stitch my tender flesh?

She straightened and dabbed the towel on my head again.

—I don't know. Just something I always kind of wanted to try.

—Stitching up an open wound?

—Yeah. Weird, huh?

I didn't bother with an answer, the weirdness of such a desire going without saying. The sexiness of it not being something I wanted to get into. As it would suggest too much about my own weirdness. A quality already on abundant display in my current mode of employment. Also by the fact that I was sitting in a motel bathroom at one thirty in the morning with a bag of ice in my bruised crotch and a beautiful and bookish and emotionally complicated young woman tending to my hurts while her brother got tanked in the adjoining blood-splattered room.

Instead, I got straight to the most important matter at hand.

—You smell great.

She took the towel away again.

—It must be the rose petals I've been bathing in.

I inhaled.

—Could be.

She tossed the towel in the sink.

—Or the deodorant I've been spraying on myself to cover the fact that I haven't bathed since my dad died two days ago.

I nodded.

—So I am kind of an asshole, huh?

She boosted herself on the sink and dangled her feet.

—You do have some moments of impropriety.

I took the ice bag from my nut bag and touched my numbed genitals.

—Yeah, certain things bring it out in me.

She picked up a pack of cigarettes sitting by the basin and put one between her lips.

—Like having the future generations of your family name put at risk?

I dropped the ice bag in the tub.

—Like being asked to an apparent murder scene to clean it up.