The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (5 page)

I closed my eyes for a moment, when I opened them it was gone. I looked down the street, knowing it must have just turned the corner, but unable to keep myself from thinking other thoughts. Thinking about the Flying Dutchman. Ghost ships. Haunted freighters, lost souls that manifest and dissolve, unbidden. Just the usual.

The light changed and I sipped my coffee.

—So where we headed?

Gabe glanced at his right blind spot and changed lanes.

—Koreatown. Code enforcement. Second day. Guy had stuff piled floor to ceiling. No egress. Blocked himself out of his own bathroom. Been filling gallon milk jugs with piss. Shitting in little individual ziplock bags.

—Ah, man, Po Sin said it wasn't a real shit job!

He looked at me, my face reflected in the mirrored lenses below the deep, horizontally scored forehead and cropped graying hair.

He looked back at Sunset.

—He lied.

Po Sin was waiting when we got there, studying several large red splotches of paint on the back and sides of his Clean Team van.

He watched us get out of Gabe's wheels and pointed at the van.

—Motherfucker.

Gabe walked over, pulling the tie from his neck and folding it into a neat roll that he tucked in his pocket. He touched the paint with the tip of his finger, leaving a slight imprint.

—Couple hours after midnight. Maybe three or four
AM.

Po Sin kicked one of the van's tires.

—Motherfucker.

I took a look. The paint covered the name of the company on both sides of the van and dripped down over the phone number and web address.

—That sucks.

Po Sin turned his face to the sky.

—Motherfucker!

Gabe picked a scrap of yellow rubber that was stuck in the paint.

—Water balloon.

—Motherfucking water balloon!

—Where was it parked?

Po Sin pointed north.

—At the shop. Around back. They didn't just drive by and heave one out the window, they parked, got out, walked around, and pelted it. Only reason they didn't get the windshield was because I had it nosed in against the fence back there.

—No one at the shop?

Po Sin walked to the back of the van, taking a set of keys from his pocket.

—Someone was supposed to be at the shop. Someone was sure as hell supposed to be at the motherfucking shop!

He pointed a finger at the sky.

—They're asking for it. There is no denying they are asking for it! And they are going to fucking get it!

Gabe hooked a thumb in a belt loop of his black slacks.

—How you want to go about it?

Po Sin looked down from the sky.

—Eye for an eye.

Gabe took the sunglasses from his face. Crease-cornered eyes, the faded black outline of a tear tattooed beneath the left. He nodded.

—OK, I'll make some calls.

Po Sin looked again at the van.

—Motherfucker.

He unlocked the van and opened the rear doors.

—Let's get to work.

He pulled out three white packets and handed one to me and one to Gabe. I watched them shake theirs out until they unfolded into paper jumpsuits. Po Sin's the size of a mainsail, Gabe's meant for a normal human. I did the same and stepped into mine and watched how they tied the flaps on theirs. I was tying mine closed when I heard a long loud rip and watched Po Sin pull a huge roll of duct tape around and around his ankle, sealing the leg of the Tyvek suit to the top of the plastic shoe cover he'd slipped over his boot. He did the same with his other ankle. And then both wrists. And then the neck. He passed the tape to Gabe who did likewise.

Gabe offered me the tape.

—Do it yourself, or need a hand?

I got taped up and hooded and Gabe showed me how to fit the goggled filter mask over my mouth and nose and I followed him into the hotel, Po Sin trailing behind us, glancing back at his vandalized van.

—Motherfucker.

The roaches swarmed me. The first bag I shifted disturbed their routine and they swarmed me, simultaneously revealing what my feet had been crunching on when I walked into the dark apartment, and what the constant background rustling sound was caused by.

So I freaked a little.

A couple hundred cockroaches come spilling out of the shit-encrusted nooks and crannies of a dead shut-in's festering den and start racing each other up your legs to see which can be the first to crawl in your facial orifices and see if you don't freak.

Po Sin watched the freaking. Stood there with his arms folded, framed by towers of piled trash and bundled newspapers and plastic gallon milk jugs filled with urine, and watched all the cockroaches in creation crawling on me trying to find holes they could climb into.

—Can't handle this, you can't handle the job.

He stood in front of me, his torso being populated by swarms of roaches combining into continents, pieces breaking off and drifting and forming
with other masses. The geophysical history of the earth enacted by roaches on a globe of a man.

He extended an arm and elegantly brushed a few from the sleeve of his Tyvek.

—Worse things to be covered in, man. Let me tell you.

Gabe walked past me, edging down the open corridor between the piles of refuse, making for the dim light at the back of the place where they'd excavated a couple windows the day before.

—Lots worse things.

He disappeared, lost in bugs and towering waste.

Po Sin watched me.

And, not wanting to at all, I thought about worse things.

Po Sin crunched over.

—OK?

The legs of one of the roaches tickled the exposed rim of skin running between my filter mask and the edge of the Tyvek hood. I flicked it to the floor and stomped on it. And, incidentally, about a dozen more.

—Yeah, I'm fine. You're a dick, but I'm fine.

He nodded and pointed toward the back of the apartment.

—Then head back there. Gabe is bagging the shit. Start hauling it down to the service elevator.

I started down the hall, the smell of rancid crap already seeping through the mask.

—You suck, Po Sin!

Appearing in front of me, Gabe shook his head.

—Here's the thing. You don't want to yell like that. It will break the seal of your mask around your chin and jaw. They'll get in. You take off the mask to get them off and they'll be all over your face. Be in your nostrils.

Roaches in your nostrils. Pretty bad. But still, like I say there are worse things.

So I got to work.

I hauled shitbags. A lot of them. The shut-in who lived in the place, he must have shit like a dozen times a day. He must have eaten nothing but beans and broccoli and topped it off with Müeslix.

Hauling the big black garbage bags filled with little bags filled with shit
between the teetering masses of putrefying garbage, the smell of fermenting waste in my nose hairs, I tried to do some math. I tried to figure out how many years the guy must have been shitting in bags to create this kind of poundage.

I took another load of the bags down in the service elevator and out the back to the bin Po Sin had rented for the job and had parked in the alley. My face itched under the mask and I wanted to take it off, but I knew the reek coming off the bags would kill me without some kind of protection. I started taking bags from the dolly I had piled them on and began flinging them over the side of the bin.

I tried to remember how much Chev said a new cellphone was gonna cost. Almost two hundred. At least twenty hours of shit-flinging to pay that off.

Crap.

One of the bags snagged a flange of steel at the top of the bin and tore open and little ziplocks of shit spilled down onto the asphalt.

—Crap!

I bent and started picking them up.

Three hours in, and my back and knees and arms and shoulders were killing me. I remembered my dad and his cronies sitting out on the porch behind the Laurel Canyon house, sipping bourbon and water and playing
Worst Job Ever.
All trying to one-up the others.

Gas-pump jockey.

Bellhop.

Stable boy.

Cabby.

Janitor.

Cow inseminator.

Night watchman.

High school teacher.

That last one from my dad. The trump that beat everyone and ended the game in laughter. Nearly all of them having been public school teachers at some time or other before they got involved with the movie business.

Wish I could get a round of that game going. Put some money on it. I'd clean up.

Shitbag flinger.

—Ho, who's that on shitbag duty?

I looked up at the guy coming down the alley tying himself into a Tyvek.

—Who's the man behind the mask?

He came close, tugging at the shoulder seams of the Tyvek, trying to get the garment to give some breathing room to the thick muscle wadded around his neck and arms and torso.

He stopped.

—Hey. Who? Who the fuck are you?

I tossed a bag of shit into the bin.

—Who the fuck are
you
?

He ducked his head back.

—What?

I pointed at my face.

—Sorry, I got this mask on, it must have garbled my use of the spoken word. Allow me to employ sign language.

I crooked my index finger into a question mark.

—Who.

I held up my middle finger.

—The fuck.

I pointed at him.

—Are you?

He pushed his head forward.

—The fuck you think you are?

I shook my head.

—No, see, we're still having communication problems here. It must be because I'm speaking English and you're speaking Dickanese.

He grabbed the finger I had aimed at him and pulled up on it.

—What?

Pain shot up my arm and my knees started to fold. I quickly calculated how much harder it would be to fling shit with one of my index fingers snapped off, and how much longer it would take to pay off Chev's new cellphone, and made a strategic decision about how to handle the situation.

—Whoa, whoa, man! Whoa, my bad! Just foolin' around! That hurts, man. Easy big guy, my bad. Uncle. Uncle!

He gave my finger a twist and let go.

—That's right you call uncle. Fuck with me, smart ass.

I flexed the finger, making sure it would still fling shit.

—Yeah, that's me, smart ass. It's a habit.

He tilted his head as far as his neck would allow.

—You still trying to be funny?

I shook my head.

—No, man, I'm not. Seriously. I mean, I wasn't trying to be funny in the first place, I was just trying to communicate on your level. Sincerely.

He grabbed my finger again and I went to my knees in the little bags of shit, many of them popping open under me. From the corner of my eye I saw several roaches that had been clinging to me bailing off, abandoning the ship that was clearly going down.

He added torque to the back pressure on the finger and I fell to my side in the shitbags.

He stood over me, straddling my body and the crap piled beneath me.

—Man, you are funny. You are so fucking funny, you know what I did, you're so funny?

I writhed, trying to take some of the tension off my finger.

He gave it a jerk.

—I said,
You know what I did, you're so funny?

—No, no, man, I don't. Please, please tell me.

He leaned down, putting his pocked face in mine, his breath fogging the lenses of my goggles.

—I forgot to laugh, that's how funny you are.

—Knock that shit off.

The guy looked at Po Sin, coming out the service exit at the back of the hotel, pushing a hand truck stacked with rotting cardboard boxes.

—Uncle, who the fuck is this?

Po Sin pointed.

—Let go his finger, Dingbang.

He let go of my finger and turned.

—Man, Uncle, don't call me that. Told you my handle's Bang. Just Bang.

Po Sin lifted the mask from his face, flicking a couple roaches from the exposed skin.

—OK, Just Bang.

—No. Just. Bang. Not Just Bang. Man.

Po Sin looked at me.

—Just Bang Man. It's like he's asking for trouble.

I laughed.

Bang turned.

—What you laughing at, shitbag? Lying in a pile of shit. What's so fucking funny about that?

Po Sin came over and offered his hand to me, looking at Bang.

—Go home, Nephew.

—What the fuck, man. I'm here. I'm ready to work.

Po Sin gave my arm a tug and it almost came clear of its socket as he hauled me up.

—Job started three hours ago.

—Told you I was gonna be late.

—No you didn't.

—I did. I called Aunt Lei and she said she'd tell you.

—No you didn't. And don't bring your aunt into it.

Po Sin pointed at the bags scattered at our feet and looked at me.

—Get these in the bin and change into a Tyvek with no shit on it, Web.

Bang pointed at me.

—Who the fuck is he?

Po Sin put a hand on his shoulder and turned him toward the end of the alley.

—He's the guy who got here on time this morning.

Bang stood his ground.

—Bullshit, man. That's bullshit. This is my job.

Po Sin leaned slightly, putting his weight behind his hand, and moved Bang off his ground and down the alley.

—That
was
your job, until you didn't spend last night at the shop like you were supposed to. That
was
your job until the van got plastered with paint because no one was there keeping an eye on things.

—I was in court yesterday. I told you. I had a violation. Fucking cop pulled me over because I'm Asian. Total profiling.

—He give you a DUI because you're Asian?

—Fuck does that matter? That's not the point. He had no reason to pull me over in the first place. I was driving fine. He wasn't profiling for Asians, he never would have known I had an open container. And that's not the fucking point anyway. I had court. I told you I had court.

Po Sin propelled him farther down the alley.

—You didn't tell me.