It would be a dangerous, frightened world, but at least you could sleep with your windows open. It would be a world where each word was worth a thousand pictures.
It's hard to say if that world would be any worse than this, the pounding music, the roar of television, the squawk of radio.
Maybe without Big Brother filling us, people could think.
The upside is maybe our minds would become our own.
It's harmless so I say the first line of the culling poem. There's no one here to kill. No way could anyone hear it.
And Helen Hoover Boyle is right. I haven't forgot it. The first word generates the second. The first line generates the next. My voice booms as big as an opera. The words thunder with the deep rolling sound of a bowling alley. The thunder echoes against the tile and linoleum.
In my big opera voice, the culling song doesn't sound silly the way it did in Duncan's office. It sounds heavy and rich. It's the sound of doom. It's the doom of my upstairs neighbor. It's my end to his life, and I've said the whole poem.
Even wet, the hair's bristling on the back of my neck. My breathing's stopped.
And, nothing.
From upstairs, there's the stomp of music. From every direction, there's radio and television talk, tiny gunshots, laughter, bombs, sirens. A dog barks. This is what passes for prime time.
I turn off the water. I shake my hair. I pull back the shower curtain and reach for a towel. And then I see it.
The vent.
The air shaft, it connects every apartment. The vent, it's always open. It carries steam from the bathrooms, cooking smells from the kitchens. It carries every sound. Dripping on the bathroom floor, I just stare at the vent. It could be I've just killed the whole building.
Chapter 12
Nash is at the bar on Third, eating onion dip with his fingers. He sticks two shiny fingers into his mouth, sucking so hard his cheeks cave in. He pulls the fingers out and pinches some more onion dip out of a plastic tub.
I ask if that's breakfast.
"You got a question," he says, "you need to show me the money first." And he puts the fingers in his mouth.
On the other side of Nash, down the bar is some young guy with sideburns, wearing a good pin-striped suit. Next to him is a gal, standing on the bar rail so she can kiss him. He tosses the cherry from his cocktail into his mouth. They kiss. Then she's chewing. The radio behind the bar is still announcing the school lunch menus.
Nash keeps turning his head to watch them.
This is what passes for love.
I put a ten-dollar bill on the bar.
His fingers still in his mouth, his eyes look down at it. Then his eyebrows come up.
I ask, did anybody die in my building last night?
It's the apartments at Seventeenth and Loomis Place. The Loomis Place Apartments, eight stories, a kind of kidney-colored brick. Maybe somebody on the fifth floor? Near the back? A young guy. This morning, there's a weird stain on my ceiling.
The sideburns guy, his cell phone starts ringing.
And Nash pulls his fingers out, his lips dragged out around them in a tight pucker. Nash looks at his fingernails, close-up, cross-eyed.
The dead guy was into drugs, I tell him. A lot of people in that building are into drugs. I ask if there were any other dead people there. By any chance did a whole bunch of people die in the Loomis Place Apartments last night?
And the sideburns guy grabs the gal by a handful of hair and pulls her away from his mouth. With his other hand, he takes a phone from inside his coat and flips it open, saying, "Hello?"
I say, they'd all be found with no apparent cause of death.
Nash stirs a finger around in the onion dip and says, "That your building?"
Yeah, I already said that.
Still holding the gal by her hair, talking into the phone, the sideburns guy says, "No, honey." He says, "I'm at the doctor's office right now, and it doesn't look very good."
The gal closes her eyes. She arches her neck back and grinds her hair into his hand.
And the sideburns guy says, "No, it looks like it's metasta-sized." He says, "No, I'm okay."
The gal opens her eyes.
He winks at her.
She smiles.
And the sideburns guy says, "That means a lot right now. I love you, too."
He hangs up, and he pulls the gal's face into his.
And Nash takes the ten off the bar and stuffs it into his pocket. He says, "Nope. I didn't hear anything."
The gal, her feet slip off the bar rail, and she laughs. She steps back up and says, "Was that her?"
And the sideburns guy says, "No."
And without me trying, it happens. Me just looking at the sideburns guy, the song flits through my head. The song, my voice in the shower, the voice of doom, it echoes inside me. As fast as a reflex. As fast as a sneeze, it happens.
Nash, his breath is nothing but onions, he says, "It sounds kind of funny, you asking that." He puts his stirring finger into his mouth.
And the gal down the bar says, "Marty?"
And the sideburns guy leaning against the bar slides to the floor.
Nash turns to look.
The gal's kneeling next to the guy on the floor, her hands spread open just above, but not quite touching, his pin-striped lapels, and she says, "Marty?" Her fingernails are painted sparkling purple. Her purple lipstick is smeared all around the guy's mouth.
And maybe the guy's really sick. Maybe he's choked on a cherry. Maybe I didn't just make another kill.
The gal looks up at Nash and me, her face glossy with tears, and says, "Does one of you know CPR?"
Nash puts his fingers back in the onion dip, and I step over the body, past the gal, pulling on my coat, headed for the door.
Chapter 13
Back in the newsroom, Wilson from the International desk wants to know if I've seen Henderson today. Baker from the Books desk says Henderson didn't call in sick, and he doesn't answer his phone at home. Oliphant from the Special Features desk says, "Streator, you seen this?"
He hands me a tear sheet, an ad that says:
Attention Patrons of the French Salon
It says: "Have you experienced severe bleeding and scarring as a result of recent facials?"
The phone number is one I haven't seen before, and when I dial, a woman answers: "Doogan, Diller and Dunne, Attorneys-at-Law," she says.
And I hang up.
Oliphant stands by my desk and says, "While you're here, say something nice about Duncan." They're putting together a feature, he says, a tribute to Duncan, a nice portrait and a summary of his career, and they need people to think up good quotes. Somebody in Art is using the photo from Duncan's employee badge to paint the portrait. "Only smiling," Oliphant says. "Smiling and more like a human being."
Before that, walking from the bar on Third, back to work, I counted my steps. To keep my mind busy, I counted 276 steps until a guy wearing a black leather trench coat shoves past me at a street corner, saying, "Wake up, asshole. The sign says, 'Walk.' "
Hitting me as sudden as a yawn, me glaring at the guy's black leather back, the culling song loops through my head.
Still crossing the street, the guy in the trench coat lifts his foot to step over the far curb, but doesn't clear it. His toe kicks into the curb halfway up, and he pitches forward onto the sidewalk, flat on his forehead. It's the sound of dropping an egg on the kitchen floor, only a really big, big egg full of blood and brains. His arms lie straight down at his sides. The toes of his black wing tips hang off the curb a little, over the gutter.
I step past him, counting 277, counting 278, counting 279 ...
A block from the newspaper, a sawhorse barricade blocks the sidewalk. A police officer in a blue uniform stands on the other side shaking his head. "You have to go back and cross the street. This sidewalk's closed." He says, "They're shooting a movie up the block."
Hitting me as fast as a cramp, me scowling at his badge, the eight lines of the song run through my mind.
The officer's eyes roll up until only the whites show. One gloved hand gets halfway to his chest, and his knees fold. His chin comes down on the top edge of the barricade so hard you can hear his teeth click together. Something pink flies out. It's the tip of his tongue.
Counting 345, counting 346, counting 347, I haul one leg then the other over the barricade and keep walking.
A woman with a walkie-talkie in one hand steps into my path, one arm straight out in front of her, her hand reaching to stop me. The moment before her hand should grab my arm, her eyes roll over and her lips drop open. A thread of drool slips out one corner of her slack mouth, and she falls through my path, her walkie-talkie saying, "Jeanie? Jean? Stand by."
The last words of the culling song trail through my head.
Counting 359, counting 360, counting 361, I keep walking as people rush past me in the other direction. A woman with a light meter hanging on a cord around her neck says, "Did somebody call an ambulance?"
People dressed in rags, wearing thick makeup and drinking water out of little blue-glass bottles, they stand in front of shopping carts piled with trash under big lights and reflectors, stretching their necks to see where I've been. The curb is lined with big trailers and motor homes with the smell of diesel generators running in between them. Paper cups half full of coffee are sitting everywhere.
Counting 378, counting 379, counting 380, I step over the barricade on the far side and keep walking. It takes 412 steps to get to the newsroom. In the elevator, on the way up, there's already too many people crowded in. On the fifth floor, another man tries to shoulder his way into the car.
Sudden as breaking a sweat, me squeezed against the back of the elevator, my mind spits out the culling song so hard my lips move with each word.
The man looks at us all, and seems to step back in slow motion. Before we see him hit the floor, the doors are closed and we're going up.
In the newsroom, Henderson is missing. Oliphant comes over while I'm dialing my phone. He tells me about the tribute to Duncan. Asks for quotes. He shows me the ad on the tear sheet. The ad about the French Salon, the bleeding facials. Oliphant asks where my next installment is on the crib death series.
The phone in my hand, I'm counting 435, counting 436, counting 437 . ..
To him, I say to just not piss me off.
A woman's voice on the phone says, "Helen Boyle Realty. May I help you?"
And Oliphant says, "Have you tried counting to 10?"
The details about Oliphant are he's fat, and his hands sweated brown handprints on the tear sheet he shows me. His computer password is "password."
And I say, I passed 10 a long time ago.
And the voice on the phone says, "Hello?"
With my hand over the phone, I tell Oliphant there must be a virus going around. That's probably why Henderson's gone. I'm going home, but I promise to file my story from there.
Oliphant mouths the words Four o 'clock deadline, and he taps the face of his wristwatch.
And into the phone, I ask, is Helen Hoover Boyle in the office? I say, my name's Streator, and I need to see her right away.
I'm counting 489, counting 490, counting 491 ...
The voice says, "Will she know what this is regarding?"
Yeah, I say, but she'll pretend she doesn't.