Twin Cities Noir

THE GUY by Pete Hautman Linden Hills (Minneapolis)

Jane Day-Wellington said, “This thing is leaking.”

“What thing?”

“This drain thingie.” She pointed. “There’s water under the sink.”

Courtney Wellington fitted his Canterbury Park ball cap onto his head and shrugged. “So call the guy.”

“What guy?”

“The drain guy.”

Jane got down on her knees and looked carefully at the dripping pipe. “You can’t fix it?”

“Do I look like the drain guy?” He did not look like the drain guy. He looked like a genetically dilute, down-on-his-luck aristocrat in a baseball cap.

Jane said, “It’s just a little leak. If I call a plumber it’ll cost us a hundred bucks.”

“Old plumbing like that, it’ll probably cost more.”

“All the more reason to fix it ourselves… Where are you going?”

Courtney rolled his eyes and pointed at his lucky cap.

“You’re going to play poker? Again? I was hoping you could help me with the yard work.”

“Too hot. Besides, they’re having a drawing for a bass boat in the card room. I’ve filled out about forty tickets for the thing, and you have to be present to win.” He lifted his car keys from a set of hooks by the back door.

“What would you do with a bass boat?”

“Go fishing.”

“Right. What about this leak?”

“I told you. Call the guy.” And he was out the door.

“You fixin’ this yourself, darlin’?” The man in the orange apron hitched up his jeans and waddled toward the back of the plumbing aisle.

Jane followed. “That’s right. It’s a U-shaped pipe.” They reached a bin filled with PVC sink traps. “Like that.”

The hardware guy held up one of the traps. “Where’s it leakin’?”

“I think where it joins.” She touched the open end of the plastic pipe. “Here.”

The hardware guy—the name tag pinned to his apron read: Doogie—nodded seriously. “Well now, I would say that you have a partially clogged trap and a joint that’s not quite sealed.” He waited for a look of dread to appear on Jane’s face, then smiled and said, “You should be able to fix it in a jiffy. Won’t even need any tools.”

Courtney Wellington returned to his Linden Hills bungalow from the card room at Canterbury Park shortly after 11. He had not won the bass boat. Just as well—where would he put the thing? He poured himself a scotch, then turned to the sink only to find a bucket over the faucet handle. Courtney frowned at the bucket, gave it a moment’s thought, then removed it and turned on the water. He let it run for a few seconds to cool it, added a splash of water to his scotch, then looked down to see what was going on with his feet. Water was pouring from the cabinet beneath the sink. Courtney shut off the flow and marched directly to the bedroom where Jane was sitting up with a book, her reading glasses resting midway down her nose.

“What the hell happened to the sink?”

She looked up with a half-smile. “I’m fixing it.”

“Fixing? My shoes are soaked.”

“Didn’t you see the bucket?”

“What am I supposed to think? There’s a bucket over the sink. What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I told you the drain was leaking.”

“And I told you to call the guy.”

Jane returned her attention to her book. Courtney slowly undressed, leaving his clothing in a pile on the floor. He donned his blue silk pajamas and got into bed with his wife and his glass of diluted scotch.

“Did you win your boat?”

“No.”

“Did you win anything?”

“Yes. I won $37.”

“That’s why I’m fixing the sink myself.”

Courtney frowned, struggling to make the connection. “Why?”

“Because we can’t afford to call the plumber.”

“You make good money.”

“I bring home $370 a week. That’s hardly enough for food and shelter.”

“We have my trust fund.”

Jane laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“The great Wellington trust fund. What is that? Another $200 a month?”

“$246.”

“Yee-ha.”

“Plus my poker winnings.”

“If they’re even real.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jane sighed. “Nothing.” She did not actually doubt that Courtney won at cards. She had once gone to Canterbury to watch him play, just to make sure that was what he was actually doing. The image had stayed with her: Courtney in his lucky cap and sunglasses, wearing headphones attached to his iPod, sitting slumped at the hold’em table, $3 and $6 limit, folding hand after hand, waiting for the next “sucker” or “steamer” or “calling station”—he had a different name for every variety of loser—to join the game. Some days he won a couple hundred dollars, most days less than fifty. Sometimes he lost. As near as Jane could calculate—assuming that what he told her was true—Courtney was earning about $5 an hour playing poker. Less than she made at Cub Foods.

“Ya see, ya can’t go metal to PVC without using an adapter,” said Doogie. As if she should have known.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me that last time I was here. This is my fourth trip back. First you sell me a pipe, then I find out I need a wrench, then I need another kind of wrench, and now this.”

“Lady, I can’t read your mind. How am I suppose to know you got metal pipes?”

Jane bit back her response. She said, “Do you have one of those… adapta things?”

“Adapter? Sure I do.” He produced a white plastic ring from one of the wire bins. “Eighty-nine centavos, señorita. Only I think you ought to just go with a metal trap.”

“But you already sold me the other one.”

“Bring it back.”

“But I don’t want to come back.”

“Then use the adapter.”

Jane frowned at the device in the hardware man’s hand. “And that’s all I need? I put it on and my sink will no longer leak?”

“Lady, without lookin’ at it myself, there’s no way I can promise you anything.”

“I don’t want to have to come back here.”

“You want my advice, lady? Call a plumber.”

“You sound just like my husband.”

“How so?”

“He’s an incompetent chauvinist prick too.”

“Whoa! Mee-yow!”

“I am most definitely not coming back here,” Jane said as she turned away.

“Okay by me,” Doogie muttered.

Courtney Wellington ate a slice of toast with apricot jam and watched his wife struggling beneath the sink. He said, “I told you to call the guy.”

“If you say that one more time, I’m going to bury this wrench in your skull.”

“You could call a guy for that too.” Courtney sipped his coffee. “See, the way the world works is there’s a guy for everything. I’m the poker guy. You’re the grocery guy—only you’re a gal. There’s the drain guy, the cable guy, the lawn guy. That’s your problem, Jane. You think you have to do everything yourself. Like you say, ‘I’m gonna kill you.’ What you should say is, ‘I’m gonna have you killed.’ You really want somebody dead, you call the guy.”

“You got his number?”

“Matter of fact, I do. Meet all kinds at the casino.”

Jane wriggled out from under the sink and sat up. “What is it?”

“What is what?”

“The number. The number of the guy I call to have somebody killed.”

Courtney blinked. “Ha ha,” he said.

“I’m serious. Do you really know such a person?”

He shrugged and looked away. “More or less.”

“What is it? More or less?”

“I hate it when you get like this.”

“I just wanted you to know that I know you’re full of shit up to your ears, Court.”

“Up yours, plumber lady.”

Jane reinserted her upper body into the sink cabinet. “You let me know when you find that number.”

“I find it, you better believe you’re the last person I’d share it with.”

“Probably a good idea,” she said as she tightened the nut.

She was still struggling with the drain trap when Courtney left an hour later to play in a Sunday afternoon hold’em tournament with a $5,000 guaranteed prize pool. “Lotta dead money in this thing,” he said, referring to all the weak players who would be entering. “See you around dinnertime.”

“You better find yourself something to eat at Canterbury,” Jane said.

Courtney got knocked out of the tournament on the “bub-ble”— one place short of the money. To make himself feel better he got into a juicy 6-12 hold’em game, took a couple of bad beats, and found himself down another $320. He tugged his lucky cap down low over his eyes, dialed up some vintage Pink Floyd on his iPod, and waited for a hand.

Four hours later he had come all the way back to even. He considered going home, but the thought of finding Jane still under the kitchen sink made him twitchy. Besides, had she not implied that there would be no dinner waiting for him?

He flagged down a waitress and ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a beer.

Courtney pulled into his driveway at midnight feeling quite proud of his $130 profit. It was after midnight. Jane would be done with her little plumbing project and, he hoped, asleep in bed. He parked the car and quietly let himself into the house. All the lights were out. He made his way to the kitchen, thinking to have a little nightcap before bed. He turned on the light. The bucket was back over the kitchen faucet handle. He shook his head. There should be some kind of law against women wielding tools.

What was that sound?

He stopped, listening. Music. He tilted his head, searching for the source. Was it coming from outside the house? No…he turned in a slow circle, then focused his ears on the door to the basement stairs. He opened the door. It was definitely coming from the basement. Fleetwood Mac, Jane’s favorite. He hated Fleetwood Mac. Why was Fleetwood Mac coming from the basement? Jane must have left the stereo in the rec room running.

Courtney flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs. Nothing. Another goddamn light bulb burned out. He started down the steps in the dark. On the third step his foot hit something slippery and the world turned sideways; he was falling, crashing down the steps in three incredibly painful jolts. He heard an ear-bending howl come from his own throat and landed hard on his hip in the dark at the bottom of the stairs.

Christ. Was he broken? Had he busted his hip? Or worse?

After several seconds he tried to move his right leg. It worked. It hurt, but it worked. He moved his left leg, then each of his arms. Everything hurt, but it all seemed to function. He untangled his body and got onto his hands and knees. He waited in that position until the spinning stopped, then carefully stood up and groped for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and turned it on.

What had happened? What had he slipped on? He saw something black puddled at the bottom of the steps. He picked it up. One of the slippery nylon things Jane wore under her dresses. A slip. He’d slipped on a slip.

Christ, he could have been killed!

Jane heard her husband’s footsteps coming back up the basement stairs. She closed her eyes tight and took a deep, shuddering breath, her first since she’d heard Courtney’s shout and the crashing of his body tumbling down the steps.

He had survived the fall, and he was walking.

“Goddamnit, Jane!” she heard him shout from the kitchen. She heard him stomping through the house toward the bedroom, the faint, steady beat of Mick Fleetwood on drums in the background. She turned on the light and sat up in bed. He came in gripping her lacy black slip in his fist.

“What the hell is this?” He shook the undergarment in her face. “I could’ve been killed!”

Jane shook her head. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“This slip! I fell all the way down the goddamn stairs…” He went on for some time, describing his fall in graphic detail. Jane stared up at him, waiting for him to wind down.

“It must have fallen from the laundry basket,” she said as his rant faltered.

That set him off again. “I coulda been killed,” he said for the third or fourth time.

“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “I was careless.” After all, he was absolutely right. He was right about the sink drain, and he was right about the slip.

Next time, she thought. Next time she would call the guy.