Triptych

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

John was so exhausted that he almost missed his bus stop. He bolted up from the seat, calling, “Wait!” as the driver started to close the door.

He practically fell onto the sidewalk, his body feeling as if his muscles had been jackhammered. Art had asked for a volunteer to work late and John had gladly raised his hand, thinking he’d be better off having something to occupy his mind other than Joyce and the mess he had gotten himself caught up in. He couldn’t even close his eyes without thinking about that little blonde girl in Michael’s backyard. Last night, he had been shivering so hard that he woke himself up. Sweat covered his body and he had started keening like a child, rocking himself back and forth until he fell back into a fitful sleep.

Art’s overtime job was the kind of shitwork you wouldn’t ask your worst enemy to do: cleaning out a clog in the main canister of the vacuum system. The tank was buried underground and designed to hold what seemed like a million gallons of carpet fuzz, Cheerios and what smelled like sour candy gone bad-all the debris they vacuumed out of cars before sending them through the washer. John had barely fit through the opening, and when he had gotten inside, he’d guessed the tank was maybe ten feet wide and eight feet round, more like a coffin than he wanted to think about.

Art had given him a flashlight and a pair of rubber gloves. The battery in the light had lasted about thirty minutes. The gloves had stuck together before he uncovered the intake. John had stuck his bare hand up into the grimy pipe and pulled out a chunk of what felt like human hair. He thought about the flecks of skin and snot that the average body sloughed off on a daily basis and gagged up his banana sandwich before he could make it back to fresh air.

“You are some kind of trooper,” Art had told him. The man had looked at John’s ashen face, seen the vomit on his shirt and shoved a fifty in his hand. Fifty dollars for less than two hours’ work. John would have jumped back into his own vomit if Art had offered to double it.

The fresh air felt good as he walked back to his room at the flophouse. There was always a smell on the street, no matter the weather or the time of day. John had come to associate the odor with poverty. His lungs were probably absorbing it, carcinogens clinging to the insides like the hair clinging to a vacuum tank.

“Hey, cowboy.”

John looked up to find Martha Lam sitting on the front stoop of the house. She was in head-to-toe black leather and her makeup was heavier than usual. He wanted to ask the parole officer something flip, like if a date had stood her up, but he said instead, “Hello, Ms. Lam.”

She stood, holding her arms out at her sides as she did a little turn. “I’m all dressed up for your random inspection.”

He didn’t know what to say. “You look nice,” seemed forward, something that might be construed as flirting.

He settled on, “Yes, ma’am,” opening the door and standing aside so she could go in first.

“Got Mr. George back in Bosticks this morning,” she told him.

“Who?”

“Your buddy from upstairs.”

John didn’t know who she was talking about. Then he did. “He’s not my buddy,” he told her, and she gave him a look that said he had better check his tone. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “It’s been a long day. I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“That’s why they call them random.”

There were thirteen stairs up to his floor, and John felt like he had to practically drag himself up each one. The truth was that he hadn’t really slept since he had followed Michael to Grady Homes two days ago and found out what his cousin was doing. The black woman’s terrified screams still echoed in his head. John was reminded of his own screams when Zebra started going at him that first night at Coastal. They were almost exactly the same.

John unlocked the dead bolt and pushed open his door. The first thing he noticed was that the window was cracked open about six inches, the construction-paper shade ripped at the bottom. The other thing he noticed was the smell. It took him a couple of seconds to realize the odor was coming off of his own body. It was fear.

“You’ve changed the place around.” Ms. Lam looped her purse around the doorknob so she could free her hands. “Like what you’ve done with it.” She started going through his clothes, but John could only stare at his bed, the way it had been angled out from the corner instead of left flat against the wall like he always had it.

Whoever had broken in wanted John to know he’d been here.

Ms. Lam was lifting up the cooler, checking inside. She said, “Your urine test came back okay.”

John could not answer. The photograph of his mother was altered. Someone had ripped it down the center, taken John out of the picture.

“John?”

His head snapped around to look at her.

“It was clean,” she said, then pointed to the bed. “Want to lift that for me?”

He leaned down to lift his mattress. His fingertips made contact with something solid, something cold.

John froze, one hand under the mattress, the other on top.

“John?” Ms. Lam asked. She clapped her hands together to spur him on. “Let’s go, sweetheart. I don’t have all night.”

Saliva fell out of his open mouth. His chest constricted. He started to shake.

“John?” Ms. Lam was beside him, her hand on his back. “Come on, cowboy. What’s going on?”

“S-s-sick,” he stuttered, tremors wracking his body. He felt his bowels loosen and was terrified they would let go.

“Let’s just sit you down,” she soothed, guiding him to sit down on the bed. She pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “You feel real clammy. You’re not getting sick on me, are you, boy?”

“I’m…” John couldn’t form a sentence. “I’m…” He looked at the open window, the six inches of space.

“You want some water?”

He nodded, quick up and down jerks of his head.

“I’ve got some bottled water in my purse.”

She turned her back to him to get her purse off the door and in one desperate motion he pulled the knife out from under the mattress and tossed it toward the six inches of open space.

Ms. Lam turned back toward him as if in slow motion. He held his breath, his peripheral vision catching a glint of metal as the folding knife sailed toward the window.

Instinctively, he coughed, leaning over, hoping to muffle the sound when the knife hit the window sash and fell back into the room.

“Here you go,” Ms. Lam said, twisting the bottle open. “Take a couple of drinks.”

John did as he was told, then chanced a look down as he wiped his brow, scanning the carpet below the window. Empty. The space was empty.

“That’s good, now,” Ms. Lam said, patting his back. “You just had a bad spell, didn’t you?”

He nodded, unable to answer.

“Let’s look under the mattress now.” She shook her head when he offered her the water. “You keep that. I’ve got plenty more in my car.”

John stood up, his legs still shaky. He looked again at the window, the empty space on the carpet beneath it. The knife had to have gone out the window. There was no other explanation.

When John had propped the mattress against the wall, Ms. Lam requested, “Box spring, too.”

There was no roach under the bed this time, but the carpet was still caked with grime. John was so nervous about the knife that he could have fallen to the floor.

“Go on and put it back.” She thumbed through the books on the table beside his bed. If she saw the torn photograph of his mother, she didn’t say. “You finish your book? Tess of the D’Urbervilles?”

“Uh,” John said, surprised by the question. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell me, John, who christened Tess’s baby?”

He stared at her expertly made-up eyes. She blinked. “John?”

It was a trick question. She was trying to trick him. “Tess did,” he finally said, and even though he knew he was right, he was terrified of being wrong. “The priest wouldn’t do it, so she did it herself.”

“Good.” She smiled, then looked around the room again. “No luck finding another place?”

She had asked this once before. “Should I be looking?”

Ms. Lam tucked her hands into her narrow hips. “I don’t know, John. Looks like you’ve outgrown this place.”

“Well, I-”

“There’s a house over on Dugdale. A Mr. Applebaum runs it. I’ll put in a call for you tonight if you like.”

“Yeah,” he said. She hadn’t offered to help him before and he was worried that she was now. Still, he said, “Thank you,” and, “that’d be nice.”

“You move real soon now, hear? As in tomorrow.”

He didn’t understand the rush, but he said, “Okay.”

She pulled her purse over her shoulder, digging inside for her keys. “And John?”

Yes, ma am?

“Whatever you just threw out the window when my back was turned?” She looked up from her purse, flashing him a cat’s smile. “Make sure it doesn’t follow you to your new place.”

He opened his mouth but she shook her head to stop him.

“I don’t like it when somebody tries to set up one of my charges,” she told him. “When you go back in-and trust me, sixty-five percent of your fellow parolees tell me that you will-it’s gonna be because you screwed it up, not because some dipshit, Barney Fife, Atlanta cop has a hard-on for you.”

His heart was in his throat. Michael had called her. He had found what John had left in the bottom of his toolbox and decided to do something about it. The only reason John wasn’t in jail right now was because Ms. Lam played by the rules.

“Watch yourself, John.” She pointed at him with her car keys. “And remember, hon, I’ll be watching you, too.”