A Dirty Job Chapter 2

2A FINE EDGET heres a fine raciness to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects art objectkind in that locations mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.So Charlie was barely even aware of his cause shrieks in Rachels hospital room, of being sedated, of the filmy electric hysteria that sack up everything he did for that first day. After that, it was a memory show up of a sleepwalk, scenes filmed from a zombies eye socket, as he amb lead undead through and through explanations, accusations, preparations, and ceremony.Its called a cerebral thromboembolism, the doctor had verbalise. A blood clot forms in the legs or pelvis during labor, then moves to the brain, deracinationting off the blood supply. Its very rare, only when it happens. in that location was nothing we could do. Even if the crash team had been able to refurbish her, shed have had massive brain damage. thither was no pain. She probably notwithstanding felt up sleep y and passed.Charlie whispe reddened to keep from screaming, The domain in muckle green He did something to her. He injected her with something. He was on that point and he knew that she was dying. I saw him when I brought her CD masking.They showed him the security tapes the nurse, the doctor, the hospitals administrators and lawyers they all watched the black-and-white images of him qualifying away Rachels room, of the empty hallway, of his returning to her room. zero(prenominal) lofty black man urbane in mint green. They didnt even find the CD.Sleep deprivation, they said. Hallucination brought on by exhaustion. Trauma. They gave him drugs to sleep, drugs for anxiety, drugs for depression, and they sent him home with his impair daughter.Charlies matureer sister, Jane, held rape Sophie as they spoke over Rachel and buried her on the number day. He didnt immortalise picking out a casket or making arrangements. It was much of the somnambulant dream his in-laws moving to and fro in black, alike tottering specters, spouting the deficient clichs of condolence Were so sorry. She was so young. What a tragedy. If theres anything we can doRachels male parent and mother held him, their trains pressed together in the apex of a tripod. The slating underprice in the funeral-home foyer spotlightted with their tears. Every time Charlie felt the shoulders of the older man heave with a sob, he felt his consume heart break again. Saul took Charlies face in his hands and said, You cant imagine, because I cant imagine. But Charlie could imagine, because he was a Beta Male, and imagination was his curse and he could imagine because he had disconnected Rachel and at one time he had a daughter, that piffling stranger sleeping in his sisters arms. He could imagine the man in mint green taking her.Charlie looked at the tear-spotted floor and said, Thats why intimately funeral homes are carpeted. Someone could slip.Poor boy, said Rachels mother. Well rall y shivah with you, of course.Charlie do his way across the room to his sister, Jane, who wore a mans double-breasted suit in charcoal pinstripe gabardine, that on with her severe eighties pop-star hairstyle and the infant in the solicit blanket that she held, made her appear not so much androgynous as confused. Charlie view the suit actually looked better on her than it did on him, merely she should have asked him for permission to wear it nonetheless.I cant do this, he said. He let himself fall forward until the receded peninsula of darkened hair fey her gelled Flock of Seagulls platinum flip. It seemed like the best posture for sharing grief, this supercilium lean, and it reminded him of standing drunkenly at a urinal and falling forward until his head hit the wall. Despair.Youre doing fine, Jane said. Nobodys good at this.What the fucks a shivah?I reckon its that Hindu god with all the arms.That cant be right. The Goldsteins are going to sit on it with me.Didnt Rachel te ach you anything just about being Jewish?I wasnt remunerative attention. I thought we had time.Jane ad entirelyed baby Sophie into a half- top, one-armed stock up and cat her free hand on the back of Charlies neck. Youll be okay, befool.Seven, said Mrs. Goldstein. Shivah means seven. We used to sit for seven days, grieving for the dead, praying. Thats Orthodox, now most people provided sit for three.They sat shivah in Charlie and Rachels apartment that overlooked the cable-car line at the corner of Mason and Vallejo Streets. The create was a four-story brick Edwardian (architecturally, not quite the grand courtesan couture of the Victorians, nevertheless enough tarty trim and trash to toss off a crew member down a side street) built after the earthquake and terminate of 1906 had leveled the whole area of what was now North Beach, Russian Hill, and Chinatown. Charlie and Jane had inherited the building, along with the thrift ca-ca that occupied the ground floor, when their spawn died four old age before. Charlie got the business, the large, double apartment theyd grown up in, and the upkeep on the old building, while Jane got half the rental income and one of the apartments on the top floor with a Bay Bridge place.At the instruction of Mrs. Goldstein, all the mirrors in the house were draped with black fabric and a large cadmium was placed on the coffee table in the center of the maintenance room. They were supposed to sit on low benches or cushions, neither of which Charlie had in the house, so, for the first time since Rachels death, he went downstairs into the thrift shop spirit for something they could use. The back stairs descended from a pantry behind the kitchen into the stockroom, where Charlie kept his home among boxes of merchandise waiting to be sorted, priced, and placed in the store.The shop was dark except for the absolved that filtered in the previous windowpane from the streetlights out on Mason Street. Charlie stood there at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the light switch, only consummate(a). Amid the shelves of knickknacks and books, the piles of old radios, the racks of clothes, all of them dark, just lumpy shapes in the dark, he could see objects radiate a dull red, nearly pulsing, like beating hearts. A sweater in the racks, a porcelain figure of a frog in a curio case, out by the front window an old Coca-Cola tray, a pair of shoes all glowing red.Charlie flipped the switch, fluorescent tubes fired to life across the ceiling, flickering at first, and the shop lit up. The red glow disappeared. Okaaaaaaay, he said to himself, calmly, like everything was just fine now. He flipped off the lights. Glowing red stuff. On the counter, adjoining to where he stood, there was a brass business-card holder cast in the shape of a whooping crane, glowing dull red. He took a second to study it, just to make sure there wasnt some red light source from outside refracting near the room and making him afl utter for no reason. He stepped into the dark shop, took a closer look, got an angle on the brass cranes. Nope, the brass was definitely pulsing red. He morose and ran back up the steps as fast as he could.He nearly ran over Jane, who stood in the kitchen, rocking Sophie gently in her arms, talking baby talk under her breath.What? Jane said. I bash you have some prominent cushions down in the shop somewhere.I cant, Charlie said. Im on drugs. He plump for against the refrigerator, like he was holding it hostage.Ill go get them. Here, hold the baby.I cant, Im on drugs. Im hallucinating.Jane cradled the baby in the crook of her right arm and put a free arm around her younger brother. Charlie, you are on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not acid. Look around this apartment, theres not a person here thats not on something. Charlie looked through the kitchen pass-through women in black, most of them middle-aged or older, shaking their heads, men looking stoic, standing around th e perimeter of the vivification room, each holding a stout tumbler of liquor and staring into space.See, theyre all fucked up.What about milliampere? Charlie nodded to their mother, who stood out among the other gray-haired women in black because she was draped in silver Navaho jewelry and was so in darkness tanned that she appeared to be melting into her old-fashioned when she took a sip.Especially Mom, Jane said. Ill go look for something to sit shivah on. I dont know why you cant just use the couches. Now take your daughter.I cant. I cant be sure with her.Take her, bitch Jane barked in Charlies ear sort of a rustling bark. It had long ago been determined who was the Alpha Male between them and it was not Charlie. She handed off the baby and cut to the stairs.Jane, Charlie called after her. Look around before you turn on the lights. See if you see anything weird, okay?Right. Weird.She left over(p) him standing there in the kitchen, studying his daughter, thinking that her he ad index be a wee oblong, only if despite that, she looked a little like Rachel. Your mommy loved Aunt Jane, he said. They used to rout up on me in Risk and Monopoly and arguments and cooking. He slid down the fridge door, sat splayed-legged on the floor, and buried his face in Sophies blanket.In the dark, Jane barked her skin on a wooden box full of old telephones. Well, this is just stupid, she said to herself, and flipped on the lights. Nothing weird. Then, because Charlie was many things, but one of them was not crazy, she turned off the lights again, just to be sure that she hadnt missed something. Right. Weird.There was nothing weird about the store except that she was standing there in the dark rubbing her shin. But then, right before she turned on the light again, she saw mortal peering in the front window, making a cup around his eyes to see through the denunciation of the streetlights. A homeless guy or drunken tourist, she thought. She moved through the dark sho p, between columns of comic books stacked on the floor, to a spot behind a rack of jackets where she could get a clear view of the window, which was filled with cheap cameras, vases, belt buckles, and all manner of objects that Charlie had judged worthy of interest, but obviously not worthy of a smash-and-grab.The guy looked tall, and not homeless, nicely dressed, but all in a single light color, she thought it king be yellow, but it was hard to tell under the streetlights. Could be light green.Were closed, Jane said, loud enough to be heard through the glass.The man outside peered around the shop, but couldnt spot her. He stepped back from the window and she could see that he was, indeed, tall. Very tall. The streetlight caught the line of his cheek as he turned. He was also very thin and very black.I was looking for the owner, the tall man said. I have something I get hold of to show him.Theres been a death in the family, Jane said. Well be closed for the week. cigarette you co me back in a week?The tall man nodded, looking up and down the street as he did. He rocked on one foot like he was about to bolt, but kept stopping himself, like a sprinter straining against the starting blocks. Jane didnt move. There were always people out on the street, and it wasnt even late yet, but this guy was too anxious for the situation. Look, if you require to get something appraised No, he cut her off. No. Just tell him shes, no tell him to look for a package in the mail. Im not sure when.Jane smiled to herself. This guy had something a brooch, a coin, a book something that he thought was worth some money, by chance something hed found in his grandmothers closet. Shed seen it a dozen times. They acted like theyve found the lost city of Eldorado theyd come in with it tucked in their coats, or wrapped in a thousand layers of tissue paper and tape. (The more(prenominal) tape, generally, the more worthless the item would turn out to be there was an equation there som ewhere.) Nine times out of ten it was crap. Shed watched her father try to finesse their ego and gently lower the owners into disappointment, convince them that the hokey value made it priceless, and that he, a lowly secondhand-store owner, couldnt presume to put a value on it. Charlie, on the other hand, would just tell them that he didnt know about brooches, or coins, or whatever they had and let someone else bear the bad news.Okay, Ill tell him, Jane said from her cover behind the coats.With that, the tall man was away, taking great praying-mantis strides up the street and out of view. Jane shrugged, went back and turned on the lights, then proceeded to search for cushions among the piles.It was a big store, taking up nearly the whole bottom floor of the building, and not particularly well organized, as each system that Charlie adopted seemed to collapse after a few weeks under its own weight, and the result was not so much a patchwork of organizational systems, but a garden of mismatched piles. Lily, the maroon-haired Goth girl who worked for Charlie three afternoons a week, said that the item that they ever found anything at all was proof of the chaos possibleness at work, then she would walk away muttering and go out in the alley to smoke clove cigarettes and stare into the abyss. (Although Charlie noted that the Abyss looked an awful lot like a Dumpster.)It took Jane ten minutes to sweep the aisles and find three cushions that looked wide enough and thick enough that they might work for sitting shivah, and when she returned to Charlies apartment she found her brother curled into the fetal position around baby Sophie, asleep on the kitchen floor. The other mourners had completely forgotten about him.Hey, doofus. She nudged his shoulder with her toe and he rolled onto his back, the baby still in his arms. These okay?Did you see anything glowing?Jane dropped the stack of cushions on the floor. What?Glowing red. Did you see things in the shop glowing , like pulsating red?No. Did you?Kind of.Give em up.What?The drugs. Hand them over. Theyre obviously much better than you led me to believe.But you said they were just antianxiety.Give up the drugs. Ill watch the kid while you shivah.You cant watch my daughter if youre on drugs.Fine. Surrender the crumb abductor and go sit.Charlie handed the baby up to Jane. You have to keep Mom out of the way, too.Oh no, not without drugs.Theyre in the medicine cabinet in the control bath. Bottom shelf.He was sitting on the floor now, rubbing his brow as if to stretch the skin out over his pain. She kneed him in the shoulder.Hey, kid, Im sorry, you know that, right? Goes without saying, right?Yeah. A weak smile.She held the baby up by her face, then looked down in adoration, Mother of Jesus style. What do you think? I should get one of these, huh?You can borrow mine whenever you need to.Nah, I should get my own. I already feel bad about borrowing your wife.JaneKidding Jeez. Youre such a wuss some times. Go sit shivah. Go. Go. Go.Charlie self-collected the cushions and went to the living room to grieve with his in-laws, nervous because the only prayer he knew was Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and he wasnt sure that was going to cut it for three full days.Jane forgot to mention the tall guy from the shop.