“Christ, Nino, I’m sorry.”
“I did everything I could.” The mug now full, Nino returned to his desk and plopped into his swivel. From his middle desk drawer he pulled a package of two Alka-Seltzer tablets, tore them open and dropped them into the mug. “I’m sorry, we gotta let you go.”
“Come on, Nino,” I said, standing again. “I fucked up, but I got years in here.”
“You walked on a job! You fucking walked away in the middle of the night and left the place unlocked!” He grabbed the mug and killed the contents in one frantic gulp. “Then, if that ain’t bad enough, the guy finds beers all over the place!” He slammed the mug on the desk and it split from the force into two even halves. He glanced down, realized he was only holding a handle, and fired it at the wall. “Drinking on the fucking job happens now and then, you don’t think I know that? But you clean the shit up, for Christ’s sake! What kinda fucking moron leaves them lying around? What are you, freakin’ stunadz? Petey had to get involved personally; you see what I’m saying? Petey don’t like to have to get involved personally. He had to talk to the guy and calm his ass down. Shit, Al, he mighta sued us. He still might.”
“If you can just give me a week or two,” I said. “Just a week or two to get my shit together. A leave—give me a leave. No pay, just some time off so I can straighten things out.”
“Come on, man, don’t go making this more of a bitch than it already is,” Nino said. “Me and Petey talked it over, and we decided even with the shit that happened we’ll give you a good recommendation, OK?” He grabbed an envelope from one of the stacks on his desk. “Now, here’s the money we owe ya from your last check, plus your vacation pay. I slipped a month of base pay in there, too. Take the money and run, Al.”
I grabbed the envelope, stuffed it into my jacket and dropped my badge and employee/ID card in front of him. I’d clipped the two-way to my belt earlier, just in case, and with a tug, pulled it free and tossed it onto the desk with the other items.
Nino extended his hand across the desk.
After a moment, I accepted it.
It was a little after noon by the time I got back to town. Rick and Donald were waiting for me at the base of the staircase leading to my apartment. Decked out in a black leather jacket, heavy sweatshirt, jeans and a baseball cap worn backwards, Rick stood watching me with concern in his eyes. Donald, in a suit and tie, gave an awkward half-wave and a nervous smile. I didn’t need to say anything; they knew I’d been fired.
“Motherfuckers,” Rick mumbled.
I shrugged. “I had it coming, man. Can’t walk on a job.”
“Are you all right?” Donald asked.
“I’ll live.”
Rick scratched his five o’clock shadow then turned to face a gentle but crisp breeze blowing in off the water. “One of the part-time door guys is leaving next week,” he said a moment later. “Already gave his notice. I can get you in at the club if you want.”
“Thanks, but I need some time. I got to pull myself together.”
Rick nodded; eyes trained on the still water, the slowly gliding ducks. “You didn’t tell them about… you know.”
“Yeah, I told Nino the reason I freaked out was because I’m being haunted by the ghosts of a little boy and his mother.” I shook my head and turned into the breeze myself. “Not to mention the pink elephants under my bed and the flying elves that live in my fucking carpet.”
“I called the landlord, told him one of my buddies thought he saw someone in the vacant apartment the other day. He sent someone from his office down and they checked it out. The door was locked; the place was totally secure. No signs of forced entry or any signs at all that anyone had been in there since the last tenant.”
“I know what I saw, Rick.”
He looked at me. “I was there. I went in with the guy. No one’s been in that apartment.”
“I know what I saw.”
“I’m just telling you what—”
“No—horseshit—you’re riding the fence. You’re either with me on this or you’re not.”
“You’re sure it was the same lady and kid?”
My whole body trembled. “Yeah, I’m positive.” But the truth was, I could no longer be positive about anything. The truth was, I was terrified I’d lost my mind.
“All right, all right,” Donald said, “everyone just calm down.”
Rick turned and strutted toward his Jeep. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“Donny’s on his lunch hour,” he answered without looking back, “Let’s go get something to eat and talk this through.”
Five minutes later we parked a couple streets over, about half a block away from a Vietnamese guy selling hotdogs and cola from a vendor pushcart.
He and Donald both ordered hotdogs. I ordered a Coke. Lunch in hand we drifted a few feet away to the entrance to one of the parks in town. The sky was cloudless for the first time in recent memory, and the sun was strong and warming despite the chilly temperature in the air, a teaser now that Spring was only days away. Although the area was heavily traveled, it afforded enough privacy for us to quietly continue our conversation.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “You guys don’t believe me, that’s the bottom line.”
Donald bit into his lunch, chewed for a moment before responding. “No one said that, Alan. But you have to admit there’s quite a difference between nightmares—dreams—we all shared and the things you’ve described. The dream aspect is strange, no doubt about it, but at the end of the day, all we’ve experienced are dreams. You’re talking about things taking place while you’re awake.”
“All I know is that whoever this woman is, whoever this kid is, they’re connected to Bernard somehow.” I sipped my cola then dropped the rest of it into a nearby trash bin. “They’re obviously trying to contact me. They’re trying to tell me something.”
Rick and Donald exchanged glances, but neither said a word.
“You know what? Fuck both you guys.”
“You said you were drinking that night,” Donald said. “Could that have had something to do with what happened?”
I faced him. “Oh, I don’t really think you want to go there, do you?”
“Now, look, I’m just saying—”
“What? What are you just saying, Donald?”
Tension hung in the air like a shroud.
Rick took a bite of hotdog, grimaced, and looked at it as if to be certain he was, in fact, holding something edible. “You told me there was all kinds of weird shit in the factory,” he eventually managed.
“Yeah, shit painted on the wall and what looked like an altar.” I ran my hands through my hair. “The place is fucked up, I…” I can’t even remember the worst of what happened there, is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “It’s just fucked up in there. You don’t believe me, go look for yourselves.”
Donald forced down the rest of his hotdog. “Stop being so confrontational. We never said we didn’t believe you.”
I looked to Rick. “So, what do we do?”
The frustration and anxiety etched across his face was disquieting. I was used to Rick having a temper, but I hadn’t seen him struggle with this kind of fear and uncertainty since the day of his prison sentencing years before. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on anymore. Dreams and thoughts and all kinds of dark shit racing through my mind, I—I don’t know what’s happening here, but there’s gotta be something to it. It’s like nothing seems real anymore. It’s all fucking hazy and—”
“Incomplete,” I said.
“Agreed.” Donald lit a cigarette and looked at the ground. “It’s the same for me. I feel like I should be able to remember certain things but I can’t, I try but sometimes nothing makes any goddamn sense.”