“I know how it sounds,” he says. “Me, who I am. You being you. But we’re not that different. I mean—who do you have? Your file says you don’t have nobody. And me, I guess it’s not the same for me, but it feels—what I’m trying to say is that I feel the way you do. I figure we both got things in our lives we’d change if we could. You know?”
Strickland can’t believe it, but there it is. He’s raising his left hand, touching one of the neck scars. Elisa’s whole body stiffens. She swallows hard. A birdie pulse palpitates her jugular. He wishes he could feel its throb, but his fingers are bloated, bandaged, one of them pinched numb by a wedding ring. The ring Elisa presented to him right here in this office. He switches hands, traces a neck scar with his index finger, half-closes his eyes, gives into his senses. The scar is soft as silk. She smells so clean, like bleach. Her frightened breath purrs like the Caddy.
In the Amazon, his party found the cadaver of a marsh deer, its antlers tangled in the ribs of a jaguar. The índios bravos had supposed that the two beasts had been locked together for weeks prior to dying, a grotesque crossbreed. That’s him and Elisa, Strickland thinks. Two opposites, trapped together. Either they find a way to work together to break free, or both of them wither to bones. Female brains, he knows, require time to think. He lets his arm slide down the door frame. Elisa doesn’t wait. She plunges outside, unloads the dustpan into the trash, grabs and wheels her cart. She’s leaving, she’s leaving.
“Hey,” he calls.
Elisa pauses. In the brighter lights of the hall, her cheeks are pink, the scars red. Strickland feels a swirl of panic, loss, and frustration. He forces a smile, tries to mean it.
“I don’t mind you can’t talk. That’s what I want to say. I even kind of like it.” A good-natured entendre pops into his mind. Is it a permissible one? Will she respond positively to it? His head is dizzy from pills, and he doesn’t dare miss the opportunity. His rubber-band grin stretches again, close to snapping. “I bet I could make you squawk. Just a little?”
23
ZELDA SEES ELISA leaving Mr. Strickland’s office. There’s a bunch of possible valid reasons. Maybe Strickland, with his bulky bandaged hand, made some kind of mess. Or Elisa’s QCC had a note from Fleming about cleaning the normally restricted room. But when in their Occam history have either Zelda or Elisa fielded a special directive from Fleming without sharing it to speculate on its meaning? Elisa has said nothing. These days, does she ever? Zelda tells Elisa a Brewster story, Elisa asks no questions. Zelda tries to ask what’s wrong, Elisa pretends not to hear. Each snub is a poke to Zelda’s ribs as hard as if from Strickland’s cattle prod. She’s building up bruises. She winces over them even at home. Brewster has noticed, and when Brewster notices, you know your signals are firing like flares.
“It’s Elisa,” she’d admitted.
“Your friend at work?”
“She’s just been treating me… Oh, I don’t know.”
“Like the help?” Brewster snapped.
That’s Brewster. You catch him anywhere but in front of the TV, he’s switchblade sharp. Too sharp for Zelda; you don’t nourish a friendship this long and let it go, a petal in the wind. Some outside force is in play, and it has to be F-1. Since the time Strickland nearly caught Elisa inside, Zelda has twice spotted Elisa pushing her cart from the direction of F-1. Zelda gives Elisa every chance to share details, from the open-ended Did you see anything interesting tonight? to the pointed I sure wonder what’s going on in F-1. Elisa divulges nothing. Not even a shrug. More than out of character, it’s rude, and Zelda’s beginning to wonder if she should follow Brewster’s advice, respect herself, and turn her back.
Is Elisa’s friendship really so much to lose? Zelda figures she could integrate herself into the other graveyarders, no problem. A couple more cigarettes smoked on the loading dock, a chuckle shared at Elisa’s expense, and wham—she’d be current with all the inside jokes. It would hurt, but work was work, and Occam, she reminds herself, is but one limb of her life. She has family. Aunts and uncles and their various snarls of offspring, not to mention Brewster’s busted family tree of half-cousins, third cousins, and fringe clingers she’d never quite placed. She has neighbors, too, some of whom she’s known for fifteen years, some who hurrah when she arrives at their cookouts. And there is church, which is family and neighbors both, where they get loud, where they embrace and cry, where there is always support, always love.
There it is: all the proof that Zelda doesn’t need Elisa.
But Zelda wants Elisa. She’s headstrong about it, like a teenager forbidden to see a friend. Except she’s not a teenager. She’s the one, not Brewster, not her family, not her church, who gets to say when her pride has taken too much stomping. If she wants to give one more chance to a friend who’s out of chances, she will. Besides, a woman goes crazy when a man’s involved—men, too, go just as crazy—and that’s her working theory: Elisa Esposito is having herself an affair. If F-1 is the rendezvous point, then it has to be Dr. Hoffstetler, doesn’t it? That man who’s been so nice to them? Who so often works such late hours? Who doesn’t wear a ring?
Zelda doesn’t hold it against her. Heck, she’s tempted to offer congratulations; Elisa hasn’t had a man since Zelda’s known her. True, the affair could get her fired, but also true is that, if it works out, maybe she and Dr. Hoffstetler could leave Occam together. Can you imagine it? Elisa married to a doctor?
Tonight, though, after seeing Elisa hurrying away from Strickland’s office, Zelda isn’t sure. No doubt Strickland also has a key card to F-1. What if that nasty man with his rusty Howdy-do, who, come to think of it, had gotten himself an eyeful of Elisa’s legs when they met in his office, had made some sort of move? Elisa’s smart, but she’s got squat for experience when it comes to men. And if Zelda’s ever met a man who’d take advantage of a woman like that, it’s Mr. Strickland.
A metal rigidity screws into Zelda’s jaw, fists, and feet, all parts that could get a meek janitor in trouble at a place like Occam. She makes a choice. She only has to skip two rooms, storage spaces rarely dirty to begin with, to trail Elisa for the final half hour of the graveyard shift. Zelda feels like a creep. Worse, her detective work turns up nothing concrete. Neither Elisa’s uniform or hair seem ruffled from a physical encounter. Something, though, happened in Strickland’s office; Elisa fails to hang a feather duster upon its cart peg three straight times.
The shift bell rings. The janitors rebound to the locker room. Zelda keeps her watch on Elisa, speeding up her clothes change so she can make it to the punch cards right behind her. Only when they are outside, beneath the melon orange of a sunrise scar, waiting in the bus stop’s calf-high gravel dust, does Zelda send up a prayer, snag the startled Elisa by the sleeve, and pull her over to the trash can, spooking a raid of squirrels. Elisa’s eyes, red and tired at this hour, flash with caution.
“I know, hon. I know. You don’t want to talk to me. You don’t want to talk at all. Then don’t. Just listen. Before the bus comes, just listen.”
Elisa tries to dodge away, but Zelda exploits something she rarely does, her size and strength, and pulls Elisa back by the cuff hard enough that Elisa’s hip gongs the trash can. Elisa begins to sign with an angry energy, and Zelda gets the gist of the points and slashes. They are excuses, justifications, pretexts. It’s telling that not one of them is an apology. An apology would be admitting that she’d done something wrong.