When Eva assigned Ike to sorting again, Rourke said, in a quiet voice, that his foot still wasn’t completely healed and he’d go to the union if she refused to give him indoor work. Eva said that was his right and she’d wait for the call. Rourke organized his trays like a mute, sulky, but hyperactive child and was out on route before any of the other carriers.
There’s no float available today and Ike is thankful for this. It means he’ll have to sort and handle the customers at the counter, but he’ll be alone with Eva and he needs to talk. He waits a few minutes after the last carrier, Jacobi, leaves, then moves to Eva’s office.
“What do you think?” he blurts. “You think they know we know? You think we’re in trouble here? You decide who we should talk to?”
Eva smiles and raises her eyebrows. “Number one. You calm down. I don’t care how. Find a way.”
“Okay, all right. You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m not good under pressure. I’ve got a terrible gag reflex.”
“Deep breaths. Over and over.”
“Takes a lot of concentration.”
“Did you sleep?”
“No way. Not five minutes. Terrible. My sister was working all night. Never got home. I watched Johnny Belinda on cable, then about an hour of rap videos till I was going nuts, then I put in a tape and watched The Frozen Dead.”
“You should’ve come over. I drank a dozen cups of tea and watched Orson Welles in The Stranger.”
“So what have you decided?”
“I’m not sure who—”
“We’ve got to talk to someone—”
“What I’m saying is we’ve got very little information.”
“What are you talking about? You told me, remember? You said they’re selling some weird drug—”
“We don’t know what they’re selling. It could be some pathetic gimmick Rourke dreamed up. The Mailman’s Miracle Diet Program. Starch blockers and vitamins.”
“This isn’t what you told me. This is not what you said.”
“The other thing is, you tell someone on this, you’re an informer.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“Tell me you’re not. It makes you an informer, Ike, you’ve finked on co-workers.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“I’m just saying. I’m playing devil’s advocate. You want to review all the information before you make a crucial move.”
“They’re criminals, for God’s sake, Eva.”
“You don’t know that, Ike. You don’t know anything. You’re going on what I told you.”
“Exactly. What you told me. Listen, I still think the thing to do is to call my sister in. We call Lenore. We say, ‘Lenore, this is what we know.’ We let her decide what’s what. She’s a professional. She’s my sister. She’ll know what to do.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll be honest with you. This surprises me. I’m pretty surprised here.”
“What do you mean?”
“To be honest, nothing personal, but I always thought you were like the picture of good judgment, clear thought. You knew what to do. Take-charge person. Responsible—”
“I think I’m being responsible. We wait and we see. I think this is the responsible route.”
“I’m as scared as you are, Eva.”
“This has nothing to do with fear.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“I’m asking for a little time.”
“How much?”
“Things just don’t seem as black and white to me.”
“C’mon. Please.”
“That’s the truth. Sorry, but it is. Give me today. I’ll work it out today. Tonight I’ll come by your place. We’ll talk with your sister.”
“Tonight?”
“Let’s just get through the day. Let’s just act like it’s a normal day. Like any other day.”
Ike pauses, breathes, nods, starts to walk backward. “I’ll be at the cage. Sorting.”
Eva nods back, looks down at her desk blotter, and says, “Thanks, Ike. Will you close the door going out?”
He walks to the cage and turns on the fluorescents mounted over the sorting boxes. He thinks that with the lights on, the cage looks like a miniature baseball stadium during a night game — the main wall of slots and its two hinged and angled wings are the bleachers. Sometimes he thinks of each letter that he sails into the correct slot as a home run. But he never thinks of himself as the batter, more like some unknown contest winner, called upon to croak out the national anthem.
He knows it’s going to be a long day. He doesn’t understand Eva’s hesitation. Sometimes things are black and white. If what she says she saw at the Bach Room is true, then Rourke and the others have gone into the drug-dealing business. And it’s probably pretty likely they’re even using the post office in some way. What’s there to debate about? Ike doesn’t consider himself some hard-line law-and-order dork, but wrong is wrong. Illegal is illegal. The proper people should be contacted and talked to. Like Lenore. Lenore’s job is to deal with this situation. It’s what the city pays her to do and she knows how to do it well. What the hell could be going through Eva’s brain? Is there some subtlety that Ike’s missing? Is there information he hasn’t been given?
He suddenly feels more like an outsider than ever, like someone who, no matter what time they leave to go to the theater, walks in ten minutes after the movie has started. And every question whispered to the person in the next seat is met with an avalanche of the shushing noise.
How do you remove that feeling? How do you inject yourself into the ordinary track of life? How do you become common, a typical part of a greater whole, just one more guy who belongs to dozens of groupings without any thought to the process, immersed so mindlessly into roles like husband, father, son, neighbor, alumnus, local barroom crony, civic committee chairman, church member, Elk, Rotarian, Knight of Columbus, Red Sox fan, Red Cross volunteer, poker team member, Tuesday’s car-pool driver, citizens’ crime-watch associate, Big Brother, one of the block’s nightly eleven o’clock dog-walkers …
Ike stops, a long manila envelope in hand, hovering before a slot. He can’t think of one thing, one role, one activity, that defines him as a member of something. As belonging to anything. Then he remembers brother, but it’s an empty, uncomfortable word. His closeness to Lenore has diminished every day since adolescence. And he’s helpless to stop the erosion. It’s like an ugly side of nature, not pleasant to talk about or think of, but truthful, provable, a fact of life. He’s sure that some of this growing distance is Lenore’s fault. Her behavior and attitude and general personality have grown harsher and tougher since they turned teenagers; they took on something like a barbed-wire coating after Mom and Dad died. But Ike knows probably more than half of their distance is his responsibility. It’s only logical. It follows the same pattern as his relationships at work, in the city, walking through the supermarket, pumping gas at the self-serve station. Ike knows he makes people feel hostile and aggressive. Maybe there’s a doctor somewhere in Quinsigamond who could take on the case, study the facts, and make a few basic determinations. But Lenore is his sister. His twin. It shouldn’t have to come to that, help from some cold outsider. That’s why he’s thought of the police novels they could write together. The idea was a tool, a possible device for pulling them back toward a feeling, a surety, a blanket called family or bloodlove.