Pariah (19 page)

Mona isn’t a threat.

Dabney lay on his tarp, staring up at the cosmos. The haze had cleared and for the first time in weeks the sky was pinpricked with countless stars. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, sucking small deposits of food from between his teeth. His belly churned happily. There were leftovers on the table, which remained on the roof. Leftovers. How decadent. The only thing lacking in this equation was a cigarette. Oh sweet Lord above, a cigarette would be glorious. The thought sent a shiver of pleasure through his body. Dabney eased up off the ground, trod over to the table, and scooped out the remnants of a can of peas, then drank the pea water, swishing it around like a funky mouthwash. He thought about dental hygiene. Maybe that girl could get some toothpaste and Scope and whatnot. Listerine, but not the nasty medicinal kind. That minty stuff. Or the citrus kind! If it tasted like orange soda he’d gargle all day and keep the gingivitis at bay.

And cigarettes. Definitely cigarettes.

He was sorry he hadn’t spotted her. All his time up here playing lookout when there was nothing to see and the one time something was brewing he’d been napping on the job. Abe got that glory.

“Thank you, God,” he said aloud, just in case he seemed unappreciative.

With his lantern burning, Dabney polished off every morsel that remained.

“I wouldn’t mind breaking off a piece of that,” Eddie said, the only one in the building rubbing south of his belly. “Oh yeah. I didn’t get that good of a look, but she looked fuckin’ young, bronus. A little light in the tit-tay department, but I don’t care.”

“Sure, whatever,” Dave replied.

“Whatever?
Pfff.
Okay, bro, fine. More for me.”

Dave sighed expansively and shook his head.

“What? What, dude,
what
? You’re actin’ like her showin’ up isn’t the greatest thing since
Girls Gone Wild
.”

“Of course it is, but Jesus, Eddie, you’re already thinking about nailing her and she just got here. Plus which, unless rape is your new thing, maybe you oughta test those waters before you go assuming she’ll have anything to do with you.”

“Y’know, I never noticed what a sad sack o’ shit you can be sometimes. And you better stow that shit about the rape. That’s
our
business and no one else’s,
capisce
? I get wind of you spreadin’ that around and . . .”

“And what? Oh that’s right. Murder’s on your résumé, too.”

Eddie got up off the futon and stomped over to Dave, who sat on the carpet, back to the wall. Eddie stood with his legs spread wide, a posture of unquestionable dominance. He kept making and unmaking fists as he stared down at Dave, who looked up with defiance.

“What? You gonna hit me?” he asked. “You gonna
kill
me?”

Eddie glared at Dave, looked away, looked around the room. After a minute his posture relaxed, the expression on his face uncertain. “Why you gotta push my buttons, bro?” he asked, his voice
a soft whine. “This was a good night and you had to go bringing up that old business.”

“
Old business?
It was what, a week or so ago? If that?” Who kept a calendar any more?

“You know what I mean. Look, whatever, okay? The Wandering Jewess was a mistake, bro. I told you I didn’t mean to . . . The Comet just got a little out of . . . Anyway, truce. Okay, bro? I don’t wanna end the day on a note like this.”

“How about a note like this, then?” Dave pulled Eddie’s shorts down.

With his eyes closed, Eddie conjured what’s-her-name’s face in place of Dave’s.

“So who’s the boy who cried wolf now, huh, Mrs. Bigshot? Who’s the
gantser macher
around here?”

“It isn’t nice to gloat, Abe,” Ruth said, but she smiled in spite of herself. Abe had done well. Very well. She curled around him and in the dark allowed herself to imagine Abe as he’d been when they met. To her complete surprise, Abe put his arm around her shoulders instead of shrugging her away. “Okay, maybe you can gloat a little. Our hero.” She kissed his cheek and restrained herself from smacking her lips to ease the tickle from his beard. Let the goyim have visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads. As Ruth drifted off she dreamt of shaving cream and fresh razors for Abe.

And soap and paper towels and deodorant.

She seldom cleaned the house any more—just the occasional cursory run with the broom—but now a radiant vision of Lysol and Comet and Soft Scrub and refills for her Swiffer, both wet and dry, floated through her brain. Suddenly she was young again,
dancing like Fred Astaire—to heck with Ginger; Ruth wanted to lead! Her partner was a mop and the setting a palatial kitchen. As she danced every surface she passed gleamed, shaming every commercial for every domestic cleaning product ever made. White surfaces shone bright as a thousand suns. Was that a speck of grease on the stove top? With the grace of a dozen Baryshnikovs, Ruth leapt through the air and obliterated the offending stain with a balletic stroke of her sponge. And not some off-brand sponge, but a good one! An O-Cel-O!

Joined by a spectacular rainbow, sunbeams flooded the immense chamber. Disney-esque forest animals capered about—small cartoon birds chirping, tiny white bunnies hoppity-hopping, deer sweet and charming as Bambi—and Ruth shooed them all away with her magical mop. “No filthy dirty animals in my spotless kitchen,” she scolded in tones dulcet as Beverly Sills’s.

As the last critter fled the room the kitchen began to shake and shimmy, cabinets opening, dishes spilling to the floor, smashing to bits, creating fissures in the immaculate ceramic tile. Shards of shattered glass and china littered her utopia and her ears were assailed by the cacophony of raining utensils. The sun faded and the sky turned an ominous gray. The booming stentorian voice of God rang out.

“Get off of me. Ruth,
please
. Get off.”

“What did I do?” Ruth said, voice quaking.

“You’re crushing my arm. My arm’s gone numb.”

Ruth awoke to Abe jostling her head and shoulders in an attempt to free his sleeping arm.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Ruth sneered. “For this you wake me?”

“I got pins and needles. You want me to get gangrene like your mother?”

“You have to bring my mother into this, may her soul rest in peace?
Ucch
, Abraham.”

Ruth turned away from Abe as he rubbed his arm.
Please God
, she thought.
I don’t ask much. Just send me back to my happy kitchen. And while you’re at it, send Abe some more pins and needles
.

Karl pressed his lips to the Polaroid of Dawn-Anne McCarthy spread-eagle, then with a gentle flick of his wrist sent it spiraling down into the crowd below. “
Au revoir, mon amour
,” he whispered. He’d spent the last fifteen minutes removing all the pinups and centerfolds from his wall, balling them up, tossing the crumpled wads of paper out the window, watching them bounce off the empty noggins of the horde. The repetitive motion reminded him of feeding the animals at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo—one of the few enjoyable memories he could conjure from his childhood that involved the presence of his old man—and equally rare for its involving animals
not
being killed by Big Manny. Each wadded-up piece of pornography stood in for a bygone peanut or piece of bread, and for a change thinking of those edibles didn’t make his empty stomach lurch because it wasn’t empty. Praise be.

The cleansing had nothing to do with faith, though. Not faith in the Almighty, at any rate—faith in maybe making time with the new arrival. Though he’d only glimpsed her as he’d hoisted up bag after bag of groceries, she looked incredible. And the way she was all dressed up in black with that funky knapsack, oh baby. She was a hip chick. She’d probably be into the same tunes. She looked like a Korn fan. Metal. Maybe Goth, which wasn’t really Karl’s thing, but he could fake being conversant in matters Gothy. He knew from The Cure and Bauhaus. Wasn’t that enough?

This cleansing was an act of optimism, his first since everything hit the shitter running. Her arrival was miraculous. No, this was no time to be thinking about God. If he thought about God he’d inevitably think about Big Manfred and that was the mental
equivalent of saltpeter. Why ruin the moment? He was still young enough to pursue a girl like that without feeling like a dirty old man. She looked to be “of age,” not that a thing like that matters when all the lawmakers and law upholders are dead, dead, dead.
What’s the age of consent in New York?
But he’d have to be shrewd and charming. As sure as he was that he wanted her, he was equally certain that Eddie would make a play for her, too. Not that a hip chick like her would ever fall for a knuckle-dragging throwback like him. Dave, on the other hand, seemed perfectly content in his “secret” love for Eddie. He reminded Karl of all those Republicans who’d hoisted themselves on their own petards, preaching intolerance while pursuing clandestine same-sex relations. In public toilets. With male prostitutes. With underage senate pages. Real guardians of virtue, they were. Big Manny had voted for them all, the hypocrites. Oh irony. And all it had taken to nudge Dave out of the closet—mostly—was the apocalypse.

Karl plucked the final Playmate off the wall, a sloe-eyed Hawaiian hottie, Lourdes Ann Kananimanu Estores—Miss June 1982. This was tough. He’d “gone steady” with this gatefold since finding her in a thrift shop back in Akron that didn’t care how old you were as long as you had cash. He’d secreted her into his childhood bedroom and made sweet imaginary love to her countless times, his eyes tracing every velvet inch of her soft tan body. He’d overlooked her taste in music—The Rolling Stones, Bette Midler, The Cars, Bob Seger, Jimmy Buffett, The Eagles—in light of her overwhelming beauty. And he knew if they ever met he could swing her around to the real deal. Bette Midler?
Jimmy Buffett?
Well, she
was
from Hawaii.

Was she dead, too? Most likely.

She was probably one of those shambling piles of flesh-hungry rot. Maybe she’d been torn apart. The thought was too awful to
contemplate. He held her in his quaking hands, unable to cast her into the abyss.

“There’s such a thing as too much optimism,” he said, folding her up with care and stowing her in a drawer. “Always have a back-up plan,” he added, patting the closed dresser.

Just in case
.

Dabney was in his usual spot, selecting a suitable chunk to lob. When he found one that felt right, conformed to the hollow of his palm, he inched closer to the edge and scoped out the scene below, looking for a target. In his day he’d been a fair hand at amateur pitching and darts, so even though nine times out of ten he’d pick a recipient and miss, he at least liked to make the effort. He spotted a likely candidate down below, a slightly rotund one, seemingly stuck in one spot. From Dabney’s vantage point he couldn’t see why, but the corpulent corpse’s spilt entrails had tethered it to the base of a nearby streetlamp, and it was further anchored by the feet of its companions. It stood perfectly still as its cohorts shambled aimlessly around it.

Dabney rotated his wrist a couple of times to loosen up, then chucked the brick, admiring its graceful arc as it plummeted down across the avenue, then delighting in the unexpected as it collapsed the head of its intended target. The fat zombie disappeared as it sank into the crowd, creating a lumpy speed bump for its
confederates. Dabney chuckled as he opened a can of mandarin orange slices and took a swig of the tangy syrup, the small, soft wedges of citrus brushing against his lips. He swished the liquid around in his mouth, savoring the sweetness. He remembered when he’d been laid low with chicken pox and then later mumps as a boy and how his mother had given him dishes of mandarin orange slices as a treat. They’d perked him up then just as they perked him up now, but thinking of his momma added a touch of melancholy and he put down the can and let out a mournful noise. “Oh, momma,” he sighed, then took in a big mouthful of preserved fruit. “Oh momma.”

“Why’d you do that?”

Dabney nearly shat himself, unaware he had company. He spun around and saw the girl. He was the only one in the building who hadn’t met her yet.

“You startled me,” he said, smoothing his features.

“Sorry.” She didn’t sound or look sorry, but she didn’t seem sarcastic either. “Why’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Throw the brick.”

“The brick? Oh, it’s something to do. Gives ’em something to chew on besides us.”

The girl contemplated his answer, then stepped over to the ledge and peered down, the toes of her boots resting right on the lip. Dabney began to sweat. “You ain’t planning on doing anything rash, are you, miss?” he asked. “Uh, miss? What’s your name, again?” He said
again
, but he didn’t know in the first place. For the first time since he’d arrived he felt out of the loop and rude, to boot. He should have come down and introduced himself. Thanked her. These tasty citrus slivers had come courtesy of this spooky little white girl and he hadn’t the manners to let her know he felt much obliged. He was
too taken with his self-appointed role as The Roof Man, like some powerless superhero, or enigmatic loner, or plain old antisocial oddball.

“Mona,” she replied.

“Mona,” he repeated. “Well, Mona, you’re not thinking of doing anything foolish are you?”

“Like what?” she asked.