Trauma Page 10

  “I get my kicks out of letting women out on parole. I get my kicks out of showing them what exciting and interesting and attractive people they really are. Sometimes there’s sex and sometimes there isn’t. That’s not important. What’s important is the sheer joy of flinging the cell door open and saying, ‘Come on, come out and play for a while. No strings, no responsibilities, no recriminations. Just let yourself dance around in the open air.’”

  Bonnie finished the last of her sparkling wine. Then she stood on tiptoe and gave Phil a kiss on each cheek. “Can I say something?” she said.

  “Sure. You’re a free agent. You may not believe it, but you can say whatever you want.”

  “No strings, no responsibilities, no recriminations?”

  “Not a one.”

  “What you said to me just then … about letting me out on parole … that’s the most patronizing bullshit I ever heard in my entire life.”

  She was smiling so sweetly that—for three full seconds—he didn’t realize what she had said to him. Then, gradually, his face went through a complicated series of changes, as if it were searching for an expression that would allow him to continue talking to her with as much dignity as possible.

  “You think that’s patronizing bullshit?” he said, at last. His voice was controlled, but there was an unmistakable edge in it.

  “In my opinion, yes. Speaking as somebody who works with men all day, every day.”

  “In that case, I guess you and I won’t be spending the night together, then?”

  “I think that’s highly unlikely.”

  “I see. Just like it’s highly unlikely that Pacific Pharmacy is going to place a single order for Glamorex cosmetics?”

  “What is that, a threat?”

  “No, darling. You should know. It’s just patronizing bullshit.”

  She found Ralph in the bar, happily knocking back whiskey sours. She sat down next to him and asked the barman for a white wine spritzer. Actually she felt like a beer, but she was thinking about her figure.

  “Let’s celebrate,” said Ralph, raising his glass. “We’ve taken more orders tonight than we’ve taken in the past six months. And I give you most of the credit.”

  “Ralph—”

  “Don’t be modest. You were terrific. You had Phil Cafagna eating out of your hand. I can’t even believe that I thought about firing you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”

  “Ralph, there’s nothing to forgive.”

  “Oh, but there is. The truth is, Bonnie, I was jealous. I wanted to take you to Pasadena, but then you couldn’t go because you had a husband and a son. And I admit it: I was jealous.”

  “Ralph, you don’t have anything to be jealous about.”

  “Yes, I do.” He leaned forward and focused his eyes on her as if he were trying to make absolutely sure that he was talking to the right person. “I’m in love with you, Bonnie. That’s the point. I’ve been in love you ever since I first saw you, except that I love you twice as much now as I did then, if that makes any sense.”

  “Ralph, you’ve had too many whiskey sours.”

  “Of course I have. But they’ve given me the courage to tell you how I really feel, that’s all. You’re the most desirable woman I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m very flattered, Ralph, but you’re a married man and I’m a married woman.”

  “What difference does that make? You know and I know that we’re both married to the wrong people.”

  “Ralph, there’s something I have to tell you. Something very serious.”

  “Ssh, don’t say anything. Don’t spoil the illusion.”

  “What illusion?”

  “The illusion that people might have that you and I are sitting here as a couple, and that when we’ve finished these drinks we’re going to take a bottle of champagne upstairs and go to bed together.”

  “That’s some illusion.”

  Ralph took off his glasses. “Is it?” he asked her.

  On Ralph’s Nightstand

  Bonnie opened her eyes. On the nightstand next to her were:

  Ralph’s eyeglasses

  Ralph’s stainless-steel Sekonda wristwatch

  One Glamorex promotional ballpoint pen

  One half-finished roll of Turns

  Eighty-six cents in change

  One Ramada notepad with the word “Ecstasy” scrawled on it

  The Next Morning

  The next morning Ralph made love to her again, in silence. He moved up and down on her very slowly, like a man taking a relaxing swim, and all the time he never took his eyes off her once.

  Without his glasses he looked years younger, and almost handsome. His body, too, was surprisingly muscular and athletic. He breathed steadily through his nose, and every now and then he dipped his head down to kiss her.

  When he climaxed, he gripped the hair at the back of her neck and pressed her face close to his chest. He made her feel as if he wanted to bury her inside of himself, so that he could keep her and protect her for ever.

  Afterward, they lay side by side with the morning sun falling across the bed in bright geometric bars.

  “Well—I guess we’d better be getting up soon,” said Ralph, picking up his watch and peering at it shortsightedly. “The promotional breakfast starts at eight.”

  Bonnie drew a circle on his shoulder with her finger. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Duke was convinced that you were going to get me into bed, but I told him you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.”

  “You’re not sorry?”

  “I’m only sorry that I didn’t do this years ago. I’d forgotten what it was like. How good it can be.”

  Ralph said, “It’s not just the sex. It’s the personality. Vanessa has about as much personality as an empty suitcase.”

  “You’re a good lover, Ralph.”

  He kissed her. “I don’t want this to end here, Bonnie.”

  “We both have responsibilities, Ralph. We’re not carefree kids anymore.”

  “I still don’t want this to end here.”

  She sat up. She didn’t know what to say to him because she didn’t understand what had happened to her. She felt excited, yes, and flattered, and daring. But the world into which she had woken up this morning was a very different place from the world she had lived in yesterday. Everything looked the same, but everything had changed around, as if scene shifters had been at work while she slept.

  She climbed out of bed and went naked to the window with one hand held self-consciously over her stomach. Ralph stayed where he was and watched her as she opened the drapes. “I feel like running away,” she said. She turned and smiled at him. “I feel like running away and never going back.”

  “We can, if you want to.”

  “No, we can’t. We both have businesses to run, people who count on us.”

  “We can sell up, and move to the Bay Area, and be hippies for the rest of our lives.”

  “Nice dream, Mr. Kosherick.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a dream, Mrs. Winter.”

  She came and sat on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers lightly through his hair. “You’ve done me a whole lot of good—did you know that?”

  “I know. You’ve done the same for me. That’s why I don’t want it to end.”

  “Well, we’ll see,” she said, kissing him on the forehead.

  The Kid-In-A-Box Case

  She parked her truck close up behind Dan Munoz’s Chevrolet, climbed down from the cab and walked across the hot concrete driveway. Dan was waiting by the front door, talking to a wizened, seventyish man in a beige safari suit.

  “Hi, Bonnie.”

  “Hi, Dan. Nice necktie.”

  “Thanks, it’s Armani. Bonnie—this is the landlord, George Keighley. He’s going to show you around the place so that you can give him a price. George, this is Bonnie Winter, the best cleanup lady in town. In fact she’s the cleanup queen.”

  George Keighley gave a racking cough and acknowledged Bonnie w
ith a nod. His skin was the color of oxidized liverwurst, and he had huge, hairy ears, like those of a Hobbit.

  The house on Ivanhoe Drive was painted bright yellow with bright green shutters and a bright red roof, so that it looked as if its color scheme had been chosen by a six-year-old child. George Keighley led the way into the small entrance hall, which was stuffy and airless and inexplicably cluttered with five dining room chairs. Then they went through to the living area, an awkward L-shaped room that was furnished with ill-matched couches and armchairs and a 1960s coffee table with orange wooden balls for feet.

  “Did you see this case on TV?” asked Dan.

  “No, I didn’t. What happened?”

  “The house was rented by a twenty-four-year-old guy called David Hinsey and his girlfriend, Maria Carranza, who was twenty-two. Hinsey worked for a TV repair company, and Carranza worked on the checkout at Kwik-Mart. They had a two-and-a-half-year-old son, Dylan. The trouble was, they couldn’t afford a baby-sitter, so before she went to work Carranza used to shut Dylan in a large cardboard grocery box and seal it with duct tape so that he couldn’t get out. She punched the box full of air holes, and she gave the kid a mug of orange juice and a pack of Oreos to eat. She left the television on, too, so that he could watch it through a little slit.”

  “Oh, God,” said Bonnie. “How long was he left like that?”

  “Six or seven hours at a stretch. Sometimes longer if Hinsey worked overtime. The neighbors didn’t even realize that he and Carranza had a kid.”

  George Keighley said, “In here,” and coughed some more. He led the way past a musty-smelling bathroom with a pale green bath and a shower with a crack in the door, until they reached the main bedroom. “I’ve had to keep the windows closed in case of vandals, so it stinks some.”

  He opened the door and Bonnie immediately smelled the rotting-chicken stench of decomposing blood. She stepped inside and looked around. The cheap orange drapes were all drawn so that it took a moment for her eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom. All the same, she felt at once that appalling atmosphere that characterized every trauma scene she ever walked into—the feeling that something unthinkable had happened here—a scenario straight from hell.

  On one side of the room were two single beds, pushed close together. They had no bedding on them except for two worn-out mattresses with blue-ticking covers. Both mattresses were heavily stained with dark brown blood, and on the magnolia-colored wall behind them was a wild array of handprints and semicircular smears of dried blood and excrement.

  Dan said, “The reason that Hinsey and Carranza couldn’t afford a baby-sitter was because they spent all of their earnings on speed and crack cocaine. Nobody will ever know what happened for sure, but it looks like Hinsey came home and found that Carranza had helped herself to his stash while he was at work. There was obviously an argument, a struggle, and Hinsey stabbed Carranza with a kitchen knife. Not just once, which would have been enough to kill her, but two hundred and seven times. All over. Even her face.”

  “Then what?” asked Bonnie. She hunkered down on the pale green carpet so that she could examine a brown rectangular stain.

  “Then Hinsey must have realized what he’d done and killed himself. Committed seppuku, as a matter of fact. Stabbed himself in the stomach, first this way, then that way, crisscross, so that his intestines fell out on the bed. The M.E. said it probably took him over three hours to die.”

  “Messy,” said Bonnie.

  Dan stood beside her as she raked her fingers through the stained carpet pile to see how deep it was and what it was made of. High polyester content, fortunately.

  “Of course the kid was left in the cardboard box and couldn’t get out. He was in there for nearly a week before he died of dehydration. He was so hungry that he even ate pieces of cardboard.”

  Bonnie stood up, too. “This was where the box was standing?” she asked, pointing down at the rectangular stain.

  “That’s right. Nobody at the TV repair company bothered to find out why Hinsey hadn’t been into work because he was always so unreliable anyway. The same with Carranza. In the end Mr. Keighley came around for the monthly rent, and that was when they were found. The M.E. estimates that they were lying here dead for well over three weeks. The kid was swollen so much that he burst the box.”

  Bonnie took a last look around the room. “This shouldn’t set you back too much, Mr. Keighley. I can dispose of the mattresses and clean the walls and the carpet for you. I can spray for coffin-fly infestation, too. Let’s say a round six hundred.”

  “Six hundred? Jesus Christ. No wonder they call you the cleanup queen.”

  “That’s the price, Mr. Keighley. You won’t find anybody else to touch it for less. In fact, you probably won’t be able to find anybody else to touch it at all.”

  “You’re getting the very best here, sir,” said Dan, laying his hand on Bonnie’s shoulder.

  Mr. Keighley blew out his cheeks. “Okay, then, if that’s what it takes. How soon can you do it?”

  They watched George Keighley drive away in his elderly but highly polished black Cadillac.

  “You know who that car used to belong to?” said Dan. “Neil Reagan—Ronnie’s older brother.”

  “Ronald Reagan had an older brother?”

  “Sure. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Dan took out one of his bright green cigars. “Is there something different about you today?” he asked her.

  “I don’t know. What do you mean?”

  “You look different. I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s your hair.”

  Bonnie shrugged. But she knew what he was talking about. After her night in Pasadena, she definitely felt different. Intoxicated, almost.

  She said, “There was something I wanted to talk to you about. I found some chrysalis kind of things at the Glass residence and some caterpillars at the Goodman apartment. I took one of the caterpillars up to Howard Jacobson at UCLA just to see what it was. He said it was a butterfly, but quite a rare kind of butterfly.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I don’t know, really. But he said this particular butterfly has a bad reputation in Mexican folklore. It’s the daytime disguise of some evil goddess. She’s supposed to drive people crazy so that they kill the people they love the most.”

  Dan lit his cigar and puffed out smoke. “So what are you telling me? Aaron Goodman was possessed? He ran a dry-cleaning business. Dry cleaners don’t get possessed.”

  “No, of course not. But Howard said that you never find this butterfly outside of a certain part of Mexico. And there’s kind of a Mexican connection, isn’t there? There was a Mexican sugar skull at the Glass residence, wasn’t there? And there was a painting of Mexican guys in hats at the Marrin house. And the Goodmans had a Mexican maid.”

  “Oh, sure. The Goodmans and a million-and-a-half other families in Los Angeles.”

  “I’m not saying any of this means anything, but I thought you might be interested, that’s all.”

  Dan said, “I’d rather leave the bugs and the maggots to you, sweet cheeks. Are you sure I can’t buy you dinner?”

  Duke’s Favorite

  That evening she made Duke’s favorite supper:

  2½ lbs pork ribs

  2 cups pineapple juice

  3 tablespoons soy sauce

  3 tablespoons sesame oil

  4 cloves chopped garlic

  Hot red-pepper flakes

  2 teaspoons chopped ginger root

  She simmered the ribs in pineapple juice until almost all of it had evaporated, then tossed them in the rest of the ingredients so that they could marinate for thirty minutes. Then she baked them in a hot oven until they were crispy.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure to?” asked Duke, with marinade glistening on his chin.

  “I don’t know. I just thought it was time we started trying to be nice to each other.”

  Duke sniffed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You look differe
nt. You wearing some kind of different eye shadow or something?”

  “Unh-hunh. Same old Midnight Caress.”

  “Who thinks these stupid things up, huh? Midnight Caress.”

  Bonnie helped herself to salad, and thought of Ralph’s hand reaching across the bed in the small hours of the morning and gently cupping her breast.

  “Any beans left?” asked Ray.

  “Sure.” Bonnie stood up. “You want some more, Duke?”

  Cleaning Up Again

  Monday morning they started by dragging down the orange drapes. They opened the windows wide, too, to get rid of the smell of blood. Between them, wearing their bright yellow protective suits, Bonnie and Esmeralda carried the two single mattresses out to the truck, and Bonnie pulled one of the drapes over them.

  When they shifted the beds away from the wall, they found that something rancid and indescribable had slid down the wall onto the skirting board, and the corner of the room was thick with maggots. Esmeralda brought in the vacuum cleaner and sucked them all up. They made a soft pattering sound inside the vacuum cleaner’s hose, almost like rain falling on a dry day.

  “How was Pasadena?” asked Esmeralda.

  “Okay. It was okay.”

  Bonnie got down on her hands and knees and sprayed stain remover on the rectangular brown mark on the carpet. As she scrubbed, she tried not to think about what she was actually cleaning up, but the horror of it suddenly and unexpectedly overwhelmed her, like a huge, cold wave. She stood up—she had to stand up—and when she did so, she almost fainted.

  “Bonnie? What’s the matter?”

  “Dan Munoz said—”

  “Dan Munoz said what?”