The Resurrectionist

16

Nadia was sitting on the hood of the Honda, looking like a different person. The nurse’s whites were gone and she was wearing a short black skirt and red silk halter and a pair of high-heeled sandals. She had let all that thick black hair down and it changed the look of her face. Her cheekbones seemed higher, more pronounced, and Sweeney thought her eyes were more almond-shaped.

She smiled when she saw him.

“How’d you know it was my car?” he asked.

“You look,” she said, “like an Accord kind of guy,” and he thought there was no way to take it as a compliment.

He came to a stop at the bumper and she leaned forward onto her knees.

“Aren’t you beat?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It always takes me a while to come down. It’s like, being around all that sleep. .” and she rolled her eyes and shook her head and the thick hair, wavy and bordering on wild, bounced around her face.

“So where is this place?” Sweeney asked.

Nadia put out her hand and said, “It’s probably easier if I drive.”

AS SHE PULLED out onto Route 16, Sweeney adjusted the rearview and looked at the Peck.

“Jesus, it’s ugly,” he said.

“Doesn’t it kill you?” Nadia said. “More money than God and they build this monstrosity.”

“Maybe in its day,” Sweeney said as the Clinic slipped off the mirror.

“That place,” Nadia said, “was a goddamn tomb from day one.”

They rode in silence for a quarter mile. It was an odd feeling. Except in cabs to the airports, Sweeney hadn’t been a passenger in over a year, and he’d rarely been one in his own car. But it wasn’t unpleasant, and Nadia was a smooth and confident driver. She accelerated up a rise and he looked down at her leg and saw a gold chain tight around her ankle. He turned on the radio, rolled the tuner until he came to some Al Green.

“It’s weird,” he said. “This thing was giving me some problems this morning.”

“I’ve got friends with a garage,” she said. “Just let me know.”

“You from around here?”

She laughed and it was low and throaty and Sweeney moved in his seat.

“God, no,” she said. “Can you imagine being from here?”

“I haven’t seen much of the actual city,” he said.

She took a quick right and suddenly they were moving through a noman’s-land of forgotten industrial parks — brick and concrete bunkers surrounded by dead fields. Sweeney counted three cars that were burned down to the frames and abandoned on the side of the road.

“You’ve seen the Clinic,” Nadia said, “then you’ve seen the city. A bunch of comatose patients lying in an ugly warehouse.”

He flinched and she noticed and said, “I’m sorry. I forgot. It’s just a big, grimy mill town. You’re not missing anything.”

“You wanted,” he said, “to talk to me about Danny.”

She nodded.

“I’d rather wait, you know, till we’re at the place. Till we can relax a little.”

He started to reply and she said, “Shit. I forgot my cigarettes.” She looked over at him and said, “You don’t smoke, do you? You look like a health nut.”

This he took as a compliment.

“I ate a dozen peanut butter crackers for dinner last night,” he said.

Nadia turned her head toward him, pushed out her big lips, then said, “Well, keep it up, it’s working.”

She watched him flush and fed the Honda some gas.

He said, “I was a pothead in college. But I never smoked cigarettes.”

“You were not,” she said.

“I swear to God. I was stoned day and night for years.”

“You don’t look the type,” she said.

An ad came on the radio and Sweeney turned it off and said, “Things have changed.”

She took another turn. He realized that though he’d been watching the landscape roll by — warehouses and foundries and obsolete chemical plants — he hadn’t been paying much attention to the route and he probably couldn’t find his way back to the Clinic.

“I thought this place was close by,” he said.

“You’ve got someplace else to be?” Nadia asked and he was a little surprised and put off by the way it came out. Nothing soft about it. No smile in its wake.

“I just don’t like to be too far from Danny,” he said.

“Danny’ll be fine,” she said. “You’re the one I’m worried about.”

Now they were driving past tenements, crumbling brownstones and row houses, heading toward a downtown section full of neon and traffic.

“Worried about?” he repeated.

She sighed and reached to the dash and turned the radio back on. The Moments were singing “Love on a Two-Way Street.” She looked at him for so long that he got nervous and said, “Drive the car.”

“I really didn’t want to do this,” she said, “until we had a couple of drinks in front of us.”

“Do what?”

“I’ve worked at the Peck for a year, okay?” she said. “And before that I worked at Rasicott Memorial in Cincinnati. And before that at the Ford-Masterson in Phoenix. All right? I’ve seen a lot of people like you, Sweeney.”

“How like me?”

“Like they’re so angry and so guilty and so sick with grief that they’re staying alive just to punish themselves.”

He kept silent for a long minute and then, unexpectedly, Nadia took a left down a wide, dark avenue and came to a stop in front of a gravel lot full of motorcycles.

She sat staring at him, waiting for the response. He reached over and killed the engine and said, “You don’t know me at all.”

They both took it as a threat. She let it hang there for a while, then said, “Why don’t we argue about it over an eye-opener?”

Nadia got out of the car, slammed the door and started walking toward a red brick ark next to the lot. Sweeney let himself watch her ass. Even in the heels, she finessed the gravel. She moved as if she knew he was watching. He pulled the keys from the ignition and followed her. The air was cooler than he’d expected and a little wet. It felt good on his face and he didn’t want to go inside a stuffy bar. But she’d already entered the building through a pair of towering steel doors. So he jogged up the front walk to join her.

Carved into the granite arch above the entrance, in huge block letters, were the words

HARMONY PROSTHETICS.

The doors below featured two heavy brass bars that required pushing down for entry. Sweeney leaned on one bar, then the other, but both refused to budge. He blew out some air and looked back at his car. Then he put the keys in his pocket and pounded on the doors with his fist.

There was no answer. He moved around the side of the building and came to the gravel lot full of bikes. They were all Harleys, parked as if on display in a showroom, perfectly aligned, the forks angled just so. But they were all a mess, mud-spattered and grease-caked.

He walked down the line, inspecting them, came to the last bike and put his hand, lightly, on the throttle.

And he heard, “Don’t you fucking touch it.”

It wasn’t yelled. The words came out slow and even. He turned around and saw the speaker, skinny and bearded, all denim and leather, ass perched on an iron rail that fenced a concrete loading apron, which hung off the back of the factory and wrapped around the side. The biker had his torso angled to see Sweeney and he clutched a chicken leg in one fist.

Sweeney took his hand off the throttle.

“I was just admiring the bike,” he said. “That’s all.”

The guy on the loading dock brought the drumstick to his mouth, tore off some meat, and began to chew. Before he was finished he said, “How ’bout I admire your faggot ass?”

Then there were three more of them glaring from the dock and Sweeney bolted for his Honda. But the bikers vaulted the rail and were on top of him before he cleared the line of Harleys. The fat one threw a body check and Sweeney went down to the gravel, protected his head but felt his palms shred. They pulled him up into a crouch and the skinny one, still holding his chicken bone, planted a knee in Sweeney’s groin. He collapsed and lost his air but they didn’t let him hit the ground. He closed his eyes and waited for the next blow, but found himself, instead, being hauled across the lot, half carried, half dragged, up a few stairs, across the dock, and inside the mill.

They deposited him in a chair. It took a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. Music was playing, some old Santo and Johnny, but it got shut off as soon as he recognized the tune.

There was a small platoon of them, fanned out in a semicircle, most of the arms folded over the chests and everything bulging. The place smelled like Colonel Sanders and skunk beer and wet towels. Sweeney put his hands over his balls.

“You think you can fuck with other people’s property?”

He focused in on the voice and saw Buzz Cote, the guy from the lunch counter at the Mart.

Sweeney stayed silent and Buzz stepped out from the semicircle, put a boot on the lip of Sweeney’s chair and tipped him back until his head met the wall. He stayed that way, on the edge of falling. Buzz leaned over his own leg, brought a hand down to his boot, and then there was a Buck knife out in the air and Sweeney pulled in a breath and said, “Please don’t do this.”

Buzz said, “I asked you a question, shithead,” and Sweeney answered, “Please, I’ve got a kid.”

From someplace deep in the room, Nadia Rey yelled, “C’mon, boys, play nice.”

Behind Buzz, one of the bikers let a laugh fly. And then everything was happening quickly. The knife was back in the boot and the chair was upright and Buzz was pulling Sweeney to standing and bear-hugging him like a lost brother and clapping his back hard enough to clear his lungs. And then the circle was disbanding with war whoops and whistles and cans of beer were being tossed hand to hand and popped open. The music started up again and the room seemed to brighten and Buzz had turned and pulled Sweeney to his side, arm wrapped around Sweeney’s shoulder, and was walking him through a maze of bodies and around an engine that was leaking onto a floral bedsheet spread out in the middle of the floor.

Nadia was seated at a long metal table at the far end of what appeared to be an antique cafeteria. The room was lit by dozens of votive candles melting over every gritty surface. Buzz eased Sweeney down next to Nadia on an aluminum bench. Sweeney stared at the woman but couldn’t say anything. Buzz sat next to Sweeney, sandwiching him in.

Nadia put what looked like a pie tin in front of Sweeney and began reaching for the bowls that crowded the table. She heaped the tin full of fried chicken, chili, and scrambled eggs, then tore a heel from a fat rye loaf.

She said, “You can’t live on peanut butter crackers.”

Someone threw Buzz a can of Hunthurst and he popped the top and set it in front of Sweeney, clapped his back again and said, “Sorry about the shot to the jewels. I told the Elephant to take it easy, but the shithead’s dumber than a sack of bones. Drink up, you’ll feel better.”

Sweeney lifted his hand, felt how his bloody palm had gone tacky on his crotch. He wrapped the hand around the iced can and left it there. Buzz grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels from somewhere under the table and guzzled. Sweeney looked past him and surveyed the room. It was a drab, gray dining hall, with one wall lined with hulking coffee and soda machines that looked like museum pieces. On the opposite wall were framed industrial safety posters, one of which read

ALL THAT SEPARATES YOU FROM YOUR CUSTOMERS IS YOUR CONCENTRATION.

Above the posters, up near the ceiling, in huge black letters, halfprinted and half-cursive, someone had spray-painted

GEHENNA.

“Try the eggs,” Nadia said. “It’s my own recipe.”

“The girl,” Buzz said, offering the bottle to Sweeney, “can fuckin’ cook.”

It was clear that Buzz wanted to see some eating. Sweeney picked up a fork and shoveled up some chili and eggs and put it in his mouth. The food was steaming and he grabbed the Hunthurst and took a pull. The beer cooled his tongue enough for his taste buds to go to work and his mouth was at once awash with flavor. There was something sweet and acrid, sharp and buttery. He got some pepper and some sugar and something on the edge of sour. With his second forkful, he came to realize how hungry he was. And then he was eating like a glutton, like a prisoner, and he was breaking a sweat and his eyes were watering.

When the tin was cleared, Sweeney let himself take a breath and then drained his beer. Nadia began to scoop seconds onto the pie plate, ladling the chili right over the eggs this time and squeezing a chicken breast up against the mix. She was cheered on by Buzz, who raised up slightly off his ass to hover over the table and say, “That’s right, let’s not shortchange this boy. There’s plenty for everyone.”

Then he turned to the rest of the clan, which was milling out at the far end of the lunchroom, and he yelled, “All right, now, come and get it, you savages.”

They raced like children, bumping up against one another, jostling for position, shaking the table as they climbed onto the benches. They started to grab for forks and spoons but Buzz lifted the bottle of bourbon in a toast and they froze as if someone had blown a whistle.

“I want to welcome a special guest to Gehenna,” he said. “And I want to thank Nadia for bringing him here.”

He smiled in a way that was not entirely benign and turned to look on the nurse. “She gets some insane fucking notions from time to time,” he said. “But don’t she come through in the end? Here’s to our girl.”

Buzz brought the bottle to his lips and gurgled it and his crew erupted, cheering and pounding the table with fists. Then the noise stopped as everyone followed suit and began swilling from cans and bottles. From there, it turned into a kind of farcical cartoon. They went into a seated dance, eating as they grabbed, mouths open, the sound of belches filling the air. These were inhuman sounds, the kind of gnawing and slurping cacophony heard only around the seediest zoos.

At one point Nadia got up and collected empty bowls and Sweeney watched her move through a swinging door into what must have been a kitchen because she returned with more food. This time it was some sort of jambalaya that featured shrimp and sausage but it looked unlikely that any of Buzz’s boys cared about or maybe even noticed the new selection. They simply continued shoveling it in as fast as their lungs and their gullets would allow.

Later, long after Sweeney had dropped his fork into his pie tin and pushed it away, the meal turned into a test of wills, a kind of contest. A few of the men started to look sick in a hungover fashion, a bit green and breathless and disoriented. They did a little stumble away from the table and waddled out of the cafeteria. The ones who were left kept their eyes on Buzz, but furtively. As for Buzz, he was consistent, machinelike. Every few spoonfuls, he’d close his eyes and dip his head and savor, then he’d clear his palate with a pull of beer or bourbon and turn back to the job. He never spoke but he would nod to Nadia or bump shoulders with Sweeney.

Toward the end, Nadia retreated to the kitchen once again with an armful of empty bowls, but this time she returned with only two mugs of coffee. She held onto one and put the other in front of Sweeney while she kept her eye on Buzz. Sweeney took a sip. It was black and oversugared.

“Why don’t you two settle out in back,” Nadia said. “I’ll be right out.”

Buzz nodded and started to rise from the table. He seemed to be in a fine mood, suffering no ill effects from the meal. “Take your coffee,” he said to Sweeney and led the way to the loading dock where two wooden rocking chairs had been set at the edge of the apron.

The lot behind the Harmony looked like the face of a meteor. It was a deep canyon of rocks and broken bricks and, here and there, random pieces of black metal and piles of obsolete machinery. In its day, this acreage had housed one of the region’s first industrial parks. But every mill except the Harmony had been more or less knocked down.

“That,” Buzz said, gesturing to the remains of what had once been an enormous, phallic stack, “is what’s left of the county crematorium. I always get kind of a kick out of the fact that they were neighbors, you know? The Harmony trying to piece folks back together. And the incinerator next door trying to burn ’em down to nothing.”

Sweeney stayed quiet and watched the bikers running wild over the ruins, working off their feast by playing some variant on King of the Hill. This version of the game allowed bricks and stones to be hurled like grenades at the enemy. Most of the players were stripped to the waist and were howling at each other like rabid coyotes as they tried to charge up onto the roof of what looked like an abandoned hearse.

“It’s a ’67 Miller-Meteor,” Buzz explained. “A beautiful vehicle. If you have to go with four wheels.”

He eased down into one of the rockers, tapped the arm of its companion and said, “Boys’ll be boys, huh?”

Sweeney sat down with both hands around his coffee mug.

“Most boys anyway,” Buzz said, then changed the tone of his voice. “Now listen, Sweeney, I don’t want you being pissed off at Nadia. None of this is her fault. You want to be pissed at someone, you be pissed at Buzz. You understand?”

“I’m not angry with—”

“’Course you’re angry,” Buzz said. “You’re fucking furious. Be something wrong with you if you weren’t. Someone you barely know drives you out to who knows where, you get ambushed by a bunch of fucking animals? Shit, yes, you’re angry. You start off scared, but underneath,” and here he arced a spitwad off the dock, “you’re goddamn enraged.”

“I’m not enraged,” Sweeney said.

Buzz nodded and held his cigarette so that the smoke clustered in front of his face.

“Two things, son,” he said, though he was probably younger than Sweeney. “First off, you’re either lying to me or yourself. And believe me, we should both be hoping it’s yourself. And second, I’m sitting here telling you it’s all right. You got a right to be angry. People fear the unknown more than anything else. And you, son, are in the middle of the fucking unknown.”

There was a yell and one of the bikers had a hand over an eye. Buzz stopped speaking to watch for a second, took a long drag and muttered, “Goddamn idiots.”

Nadia came out the door, moved to the railing and said, “Does the Ant need a bandage?”

“Not yet,” Buzz said. “Honey, could you get me a coffee and put a little Jack in it?”

She was looking out at the ruins a bit distractedly, but turned and went back inside.

Buzz waited till Nadia had gone, then said, “Now this is the point I’m trying to make. You look at these two out there, throwing bricks like children. They’re fucking morons’s what they are. But they’re family. And morons or not, you look out for family. I mean, you know that. Look at what you’ve done for your boy.”

The words focused Sweeney. Buzz reached across the space between them, patted and then squeezed Sweeney’s arm. “What I’m trying to say is, there’s not much difference between you and me. We do what we have to do to take care of our people. You see my point?”

Sweeney nodded and Buzz released his grip.

“Now, I don’t want you to think for a minute that we’re going to leave you hanging out there in the unknown. You take one look around, you see what I’ve made here, you know I’m not like that. You’re a smart guy. That’s obvious. You understand cause and effect. And I’m hoping that, in addition to being smart, you’re patient. I’m going to clear everything up for you. But right now, before she comes back, I want to get straight about Nadia.”

“There’s no problem with Nadia,” said Sweeney.

“And there shouldn’t be,” Buzz said. “What she done, she done for you and your boy. That’s the fucking truth, Sweeney. You’re gonna know that in time. But right now you have to take it on faith.”

Down in the ruins, the game had degenerated into a straight-out rock fight. Nadia returned to the dock with a coffee mug in one hand and a roll of gauze in the other. She crossed in front of Sweeney, her eyes on the canyon, handed the mug to Buzz and put the gauze down on the apron.

“Who started it?” she asked.

Buzz said, “Who do you think?”

“Don’t you think you should stop it?”

“We’ll let them vent a while,” Buzz said. “Fluke and the Ant’ve been hissin’ at each other all week.” He turned to Sweeney and said, “You didn’t know we had dinner theater, did you?”

Sweeney put his coffee mug down on the concrete. He stood up and looked at Nadia, then turned his eyes on Buzz and said, “You touch my son, in any way, and I’ll kill you.”

Then he walked off the dock, expecting to be tackled. Expecting Buzz to yell for his animals. But no one stopped him and no one said a word. He let himself into the Honda, kicked over the engine, and drove away.

Two miles up the road, he pulled to the shoulder, opened his door, and vomited. It took him over an hour to find his way back to the Clinic. The car spewed black smoke the whole trip.