by Gene Cowan
I froze. Papers dropped from my hands as I stared at the book. With trepidation, and yet a twinge of relief, I picked up the book and cracked it open. Carefully turning to the back cover, I gasped as I read the markings: January 14, 1981. The book was seven years overdue.
A million questions swirled around in my mind… What would happen to me now? I was a Library Priviledge Offender! Would the Fairfax County Public Library Over-Due Book Police come looking for me? Oh, my God, how could I check out those Hemingway books I have to read? If I don't get those books, I won't become a real man and I won't be worthy to hang around with Tom anymore.
That clinched it. I had to take drastic action.
My wallet was completely empty, save the money I had carefully tucked away behind the three credit cards the telephone company had sent me. I began to wonder if they could be used for anything useful. The bartender leaned over and asked me what I wanted. I passed him a couple of twenties, and he pointed his finger.
“Yea?” The large, burly man stood in my way as I headed towards the back room of the sleaziest porno joint in all of Richmond. I had come too far and spent too much money and time to let this overgrown excuse for a cinderblock wall to stop me.
“Yea. Of course, if you want to deny your boss my services in, well, infection preventive pharmaceuticals, then, well, I think you should be the one to explain. OK? All right. I'll just be on my way now, because I have more important fish to fry.” I started to walk away. A large side of beef which faintly resembled a hand clamped itself to my shoulder with agonizing pressure, and swiveled me around with one finger digging into my chest.
“Yeeeeesss?” I asked.
“Get in there,” he replied.
Rubbing my aching shoulder, I entered the back room through what I assumed and hoped were simply beads hanging from the ceiling. My pupils, finally accustomed to the dim light of the main room, grew even wider in this small, cramped space, which was completely black from ceiling to floor. I continued to walk forward, an act that proved to be a mistake. I hit another wall. Luckily, this one was not alive and did not possess any verbal or physical apparatus with which to accost me. I turned around, but the way back was blocked by another wall, one that had appeared at an unknown point in time. I began to get worried.
As my worrisome state increased, the wall in front of me silently slid upwards into the ceiling. My insecurities intensified. I ducked down to peer underneath the slowly moving door and glimpsed several pairs of feet turning to face my way. They had on expensive shoes, I noticed, letting absolute trivia cloud my mind to chase away some of the hysteria that had accumulated there. The snap of the door ceasing its upward movement brought me out of my hypnotic state, and I faced what was ahead with quiet resolve and thought of being a real man.
“Hey, man,” said a husky voice.
Who, me? A man? I thought. Maybe I should just turn around and leave now… But all that came out was “Uhm…”
“Who told you that I do this sort of thing? It's a lie, you know. I want to know who's saying these things about me.” The speaker was a fat man, probably around fifty years old, and balding. He had a large, bulbous nose, strange glasses, and he seemed to be sweating a lot even though the temperature here in this basement suddenly felt as if it were about ten degrees below zero. I shivered.
“I need a new identity. Driver's license, Social, and the rest.”
“I don't know what you're talking about. Jones, search him.” What I had mistakenly taken for a piece of furniture turned out to be another hulking man, who now proceeded to search me for any hidden weapons. His search only turned up a butterfly knife comb that I had picked up from King's Dominion. He laughed a refreshingly hearty laugh and returned it to me.
The fat man finished examining my wallet, returned it after thoughtfully cleaning it out for me, and clapped me on the back. “Always happy to welcome a new customer. Tell me, my friend, how did you come to find us?”
I felt as if he was going to ask me to fill out a survey card, or give me a book of coupons. “It wasn't easy,” I replied.
That was an understatement. I had searched for a month in the greasiest parts of the country to track down a lead, when I stumbled upon one of the friends of one of my tenants. Literally. He was lying drunk on the front stoop, and he unwittingly confessed to me where he got his green card from: a small club in Northwest. It made me rather upset that I had spent so much time and money wandering around the entire country trying to find this information. I was also thinking furiously about how I would explain these expenditures to Tom (wearing his accountancy hat) when he did my monthly budget. The fat man noticed that I wasn't paying attention to him, and clapped me just a little harder on my back. I turned my eyes to him.
“… Like I said, you wash my back, I'll shampoo your hair. Not literally, of course, my friend. Oh, no.” He rolled his eyes heavenward.
“What do you want me to do?” I braced myself for an impossible feat of murder or mayhem to be thrust upon me.
“Go down to the 7-Eleven on the corner and get me a Big Gulp.”
“What?”
“Don't you understand English? A Big Gulp. I'm dyin' of thirst down here in this hole. Just leave your papers, and we'll have you all fixed up by the time you get back.” He drew a curtain behind him and revealed a high-tech setup that would have made Steve Jobs or John Sculley give up their small-time dreams of whiz-bang computers once and for all and retire to a contemplative life somewhere in the Ural mountains. Massive blocks of data processing equipment lined the walls and several white-coated women with clipboards scurried from monitor to monitor, monitoring.
“With this equipment, I can tap into any computer in the world. I can change your name, address, social security number, shoe size, credit cards, bank accounts, traffic tickets. I can even take your name off of the mailing lists for those gadget catalogs. That's one of our most popular services, also one of our most expensive. But, that's optional. Of course, I do keep the names for my own mailing list. I run a little investment service on the side, by the way. Here, my card.”
He pressed a small white card into my hand. I read it over once, and he took it back.
“My only copy,” he said.
I thought to myself that I guessed it really didn't matter if I got a circular from Hecht's or Radio Shack every now and then. I couldn't justify the extra expense to Tom.
“What kind of soda do you want?” I asked.
After haggling over the actual soda to be purchased (Hubert, as I found his name to be, wanted diet Coffee flavored soda, and I reassured him that there was not one 7-Eleven in this country that carried it), I set off for the closest branch of this particular convenience store. It gave me time to think about just what I was doing here in the first place. Ah, yes, I thought. Hemingway. Why, I wondered, was it suddenly so important to Tom that I read Hemingway? Was reading For Whom The Bell Tolls going to make me a real man?
I never finished thinking this line of thought out, because a man fell at my feet as I stopped at the corner waiting for the light to change. I looked down, trying to ignore him and wondered how to non-chalantly step over him to cross the street. I then noticed that he was not breathing. I turned him over with my foot, making a note to burn these shoes when I got home. It was about time to buy some new running shoes, anyway.
The man's face came into view, and my breath caught in my throat. It was Hubert.
—————————————————————————————
I was lost. I tapped on the formica surface of the dining room table, wondering what I should do.
Of course, looking back, I realize that I really shouldn't have dragged Hubert's body into my car and back to the house. What I thought I was going to do with him, I have no idea. But at the time, it seemed that the implications of his death and my recent visit to his “office” would completely destroy what I was trying to accomplish.
I tried desperately to contact someone who could tell me what to do. I even entertained the thought of calling the Red Cross, reporting a death in the family, and getting a discharge for Tom's help. I decided against this, simply because I was determined to show him that I could survive such disasters without his help. I also didn't have enough confidence in my ability to pull it off. So, instead, I called Curt.
Several hours later, things were no better. Curt rambled on and on about meaningless yet clever things, such as Margaret Heckler and her plan to rule the world; but I had to get off the phone. Mark was due home, and he was likely to get very upset when he found a fat balding corpse in the utility room.
Then, I realised: Today was the day that the washer repairman was coming by.
I panicked. Taking the steps two at a time, I dashed down to the basement and began to dance a little panic dance on the concrete floor of the utility room. Hubert simply leaned up against the wall, paying no attention to my frenzied, indeterminate wanderings. His head slid down the wall and banged into the inoperable washing machine. It made a loud, metallic bang at about the same time the doorbell rang. My eyes almost vacated their chosen place of installation.
“Hi. Mr. Callaghan? I'm here to fix ya washa…” A tall man, wearing a cap, overalls and mustache appeared behind the door. He was carrying a box which seemed to contain every cog and wheel ever invented.
“Uh, yes. Downstairs.” I led the repairman down to the basement, gulping quietly as I wondered if he knew. Of course he doesn't, I told myself. Don't be ridiculous.
“This it?” he asked in a thick Boston accent, pointing at the only washing machine in the house.
“Uhm, yes.” I answered, wondering how many washing machines most of his other customers usually have. “It just doesn't move. The motor makes a straining sound, and smokes a lot.”
“Ah, yea. I get a lot of these. Ya see, there's a certain small prablem with a little piece of equipment that we professionals like to call a Inta-gear Stabilizing Motion Transmission Exchanger. You laymen would call it something fahly undescriptive, like a belt. It's a fahly common prablem.”
“Oh, good. So you can fix it?”
“Nah, don't have the right paht. I'll have to come back tamorrow.” He wiped his hands on his overalls and closed his tool box.
“Uhm, about what time…” I began, and was interuppted by a loud bang from the furnace.
“Ah, sounds like a prablem with yer furnace, too. I'd betta have a look at it.”
“Well, actually, I…”
“Don't worry, I'm a professional.” He lowered his goggles and headed over to the furnace assembly.
“No, really! I'd rather you didn't…”
“Well, here's ya prablem. Tha's a dead body back here.” He raised his goggles and put his screwdriver back in his side pocket. “Ya really oughta be more cahful where you store things like that. It can be a real fiyr hazid. Trust me, I'm a professional.”
My eyes boggled. My brain reeled. My ears did a half-twist. My nose did a backwards somersault with a little flourish at the end. My legs decided they were missing out on all the fun and left. I fell to the floor.
“I tell ya, you people from the south really are strange.”
“Ah. Yea. Well, let me get this straight. Yeh went te see this guy about changin yer identity, and the next thing yeh know, he's dead at yer feet. Eh?”
“Yes.”
“And yeh brought his body back here because yeh were a wimp.”
“No! I mean, yes. Sort of. Well, actually, it was because…”
“Eh?”
“Never mind. Anyway, the important thing is, who killed him and why, and how, and what should I do with him?”
“Well, usually in these situations, I'd advise my clients to, eh, telephone the authorities, but, in yer particular case I'd have to say, eh, maybe bury him in the backyahd. Of course, there may be a prablem when the rains come this year, but I think we can, eh, get him deep enough. Yeh got any prablems with leaking in this basement?” He turned away and studied the walls.
I was thoroughly confused. What had I gotten myself into? All for a piece of paper that would let me check out library books. With all the money I had already spent on this wild scheme, I could have bought every Hemingway book ever published, and perhaps even part of Key West, to read them in a Hemingwayesque setting. A vein stood out on my head as I thought.
“Well, maybe what you need is to relax,” said the repairman, who had been watching my face contort, unnoticed for the last minute. Not hearing what he was saying, my eyes wandered to his name tag. In engraved block letters it said ‘Flynn F. O’Flannery’.
“A brewskie should do it,” he said.
At the mention of alcohol, my subconcious mind boxed the ears of my concious and brought me back into the real world. “Huh?” I articulated.
“I know a place where everybady knows my name,” he said, ascending the stairs.
Several beers later, I was feeling much better about the body, the library, and life in general. Flynn and I bantered with the bartender, the waitresses, and other clientle at the bar. I asked the bartender what, hypothetically, he would do if there was a dead body in his house and he desperately needed to get rid of it before his roommate got home. I felt a sharp pain on my shin, and Flynn looked nonchalantly toward the payphones. I kicked him back, but missed and fell off the stool.
I woke up in a brightly lit room. Beautiful women hovered over me, concern in their eyes. I shook my head, and the haze lifted.
They were nurses.
“Where am I?”
“McCabe Hospital. You've got a bump on the head. Why you felt the need to come to a hospital for a bandage is beyond me.” The doctor was short, portly, and seemed a bit perturbed at something. Perhaps, I thought, it was the tall, blond resident who was constantly looking over his shoulder. I was right.
“Oliver, stick an egg in your shoe and beat it,” he said, turning to lightly slap the resident upside the head. “Just who's taffy do you think you're pulling?”
“Sorry…” the resident began, but the doctor slapped him again and he wandered off towards the nurse's station.
“If you people weren't so damned preoccupied with getting drunk constantly, this world would be a much easier place to live in. And get a haircut, Mary,” he lectured, and headed for the door.
I met Flynn in the waiting room, my fingers holding on tightly to my now over-the-limit credit card.
“Flynn, it's been a blast. Thanks for bringing me here, but I think I should be getting home. There's someone there waiting for me, I recall.” I started for the door.
Flynn called after me, insisting that he was a professional, and that I should listen to his sage advice. I ignored him, and wandered out to the street.
The repairman pulled a small notebook and pencil out of the front pocket of his overalls. Glancing out the door, he scribbled hastily: “Phase One complete. Commencing Phase Two.” He sauntered out to the street and hopped into his van.
It was an astonishingly long walk home, and when I arrived at my door, Flynn was already there, holding a bag from McDonald's which emitted the familiar aroma of french fries. I let him in only so that I could get my hands on that bag.