Sliding Past Vertical (2 page)

Chapter 4

The next day, fuzzy-headed and
blinking away dreams of whomever or whatever might have left those bloodstains
on the sofa cushion, Sarah bid farewell to her equally bleary and oddly silent
boyfriend. “Checking him in” amounted to nothing more than watching him sign
some papers, receiving an afterthought of a kiss, and being shown the door by a
dour, unfriendly nurse.

The deed done, Sarah watched Jay
lope down a long corridor with his guitar and overnight bag, and there was
nothing left for her to do but leave.

She took the bus from Springfield to
the T station in Newton and then waited for an inbound Green Line trolley. Joining
her on the platform were about a couple dozen obnoxiously cheerful
suburbanites, who, judging from their smattering of “1986 AL Champions”
T-shirts, would be spending the afternoon at Fenway Park, probably getting
drunk and calling for Bill Buckner’s head on a platter. A few of them even had homemade
signs to that effect and argued vociferously with the fans who said that in a
pressure situation, anyone could have let a World Series-losing grounder roll
between his legs.

In
my next life I’ll be able to afford a car
, she thought, glaring at two
little boys screeching at each other while sword fighting with two outsized
foam “GO SOX” fingers.

It had to be at least a hundred degrees.
The heat and the previous night’s beers made her mouth dry and sticky, and
after the T reached her stop at Reservoir Station, she’d still have to walk
five blocks in the beating hot sun up Chestnut Hill Avenue to her apartment,
carrying a bag that contained too much for one night.

Then, with a sigh, she remembered her
promise to work that day.
Might as well
not even go home,
she thought, as an empty trolley squealed up to the
platform and she claimed a seat.
Just stay
on the T until Brookline and get it over with.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so
horrible. Maybe the air conditioner would be fixed. Maybe Jimmy would be
around, catching up on paperwork. He was usually in a good mood on Saturdays,
although lately, he’d been such a bear. She could change that. Joke around with
him, run out for bagels and iced tea. When she finished her paste-up jobs, she
could organize the colored paper racks and create a new window display. He
liked the shop tidied up for Monday morning’s customers, and he especially
liked not having to remind any of the employees to do it. Emerson often said
doing something nice for someone else made him feel better. After leaving an
uncommunicative Jay at a rehab center that might or might not work and limping through
this brutally hot morning on an hour’s sleep, she wouldn’t mind feeling better.

When Sarah got off the T, she
hauled her bag higher on her shoulder and walked down Beacon Street, vowing
never again to drink nor have a boyfriend she had to check into rehab. She
didn’t handle alcohol well. She got too drunk too fast and the next morning
felt like someone had set the volume of all of her senses on “stun.” Her
current hangover was no different. The sun shimmering on the trolley tracks and
storefront windows gouged her eyes. A softball game was in full,
maximum-decibel swing on the Reservoir field. The slap of the ball against
leather gloves sounded like cannon fire; the ring of the aluminum bats made a
retort so sharp, she wanted to cover her ears.

Underneath her inflamed senses lay
a killer thirst. Two college girls passed by, cool and pretty, carrying giant
iced coffees in plastic cups. Sarah fought the urge to mug them for their
drinks. Her mouth felt like sand as she walked by the bank. Just a bit farther
and around the corner and she’d get to the Copy King. With the fifty from her
drawer she’d get iced teas, one for her and one for Jimmy, give him back the change,
and sit in the hopefully repaired air conditioning and cool off.

Just beyond the bakery, though, she
smelled something burning. Immediately she thought of barbecues and imagined
overpaid twenty-five-year-old investment bankers in overpriced Brookline Hills
condos, drinking this week’s microbrew and flipping free-range steaks on
mesquite grills: all things she’d read about in
Boston
magazine yet couldn’t afford on her hourly wage. But this
smell was stronger than a backyard cookout; it was the sharp sting of chemicals
and melted plastic.

Sarah hurried down the block,
following the acid reek of smoke, her thirst and the weight of her bag
forgotten. She’d call the fire department from the shop. Someone must have
called already. Or not. It could just be her sense of smell, sharpened to
animalistic acuity like her other senses, so perhaps she was the first to know,
the only one who could save whatever was about to burn to the ground. She raced
on. Past the pet store, the deli, the Greek restaurant. She rounded the corner
and, eyes watering, reached for the door of the copy shop.

But there was no door. Only hastily
nailed wooden planks and yellow warning tape, spanning the space where the Copy
King used to be.

For a long time she could only
stare, until an old man in shirtsleeves wandered by, a newspaper under his arm.
He stopped next to her and shook his head. “Damn shame. Went up just like
that.” He snapped his fingers, making a papery sound.

“When…when did it happen?”

He scowled, looking deep in
thought. “Last night, ’round about eleven or thereabouts. Those sirens could
have woken the dead.”

She’d left at eight. Jay picked her
up at eight thirty. “I was out of town.” She gaped at the burned-out hulk,
unable to fathom what had happened. “I…I work here.”

The old man chuckled softly. “If I
were to venture a guess, I would say that you don’t anymore.”

* * * * *

As she rode an outbound trolley
back to Reservoir, Sarah tried to remember everything she’d done leading up to
closing. She’d been pasting up résumés. That meant waxing the back of a rectangle
of typeset copy, squaring it up onto a piece of white card stock with her
T-square and triangle, and affixing it with a firm swipe of her latex roller.
She repeated the process until she had a stack of camera-ready art for the
pressman. Worried about meeting Jay on time, she sped through her work and even
chipped the crystal vase a couple more times with the butt of her T-square.
Jimmy came out of his office at seven thirty and set his briefcase on the
counter. He looked awful. So bad she stopped filling the old electric hand
waxer and stared at the dark bags under his eyes. His complexion resembled the
color of the wax. She was about to ask if he was all right when he cut her off.

“You’ll be okay alone here if I
go?”

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll close up.
Go home and get some sleep.”

He sighed. “From your mouth to
God’s ear.” He crossed to the cash register, opened it, stuck in a check and
withdrew a stack of bills. Jimmy frowned at the contents of the drawer for a
long time before closing it.

Then he peeled off a fifty and
handed it to Sarah. “A little something for your birthday.”

She stared at it, thinking what an
extra fifty dollars would buy, and glanced up into his earnest face. He
couldn’t afford to give her cash she hadn’t earned. While business hadn’t
exactly been slow, the bread-and-butter jobs weren’t rolling in like they used
to. Competition from shops with in-house typesetting machines squeezed them.
Equipment desperately needed upgrades. And Jimmy’s wife was pregnant. For the
fifth time.

“I don’t need the money,” she said.

He dropped the bill on the edge of
her table. “Consider it a bonus, then.”

She was aware of his eyes on her as
she rolled melted wax onto the back of another slice of typographic paper. When
she looked up, his lips curved into a sad smile before he turned away and
picked up his briefcase. “Don’t work too late, now.”

She hadn’t, because Jay didn’t like
to be kept waiting. Sarah continued replaying the closing sequence in her head,
ticking tasks off on her fingers as she turned the corner from Chestnut Hill
Avenue and walked up her street.
Switched
off the lights in Jimmy’s office, his coffee pot, his adding machine. Shut down
the copiers, the stupid air conditioning, the light over my drafting table. Got
my purse and—right, the videotape. Had to return it, couldn’t afford
another late fee and the store closed at eight. Shut the rest of the lights,
locked the door. Forgot the fifty. Forgot my paycheck…

With a small gasp, she buried her
face in her palm
.

Forgot
to unplug the waxer.

* * * * *

An irate Dee Dee, broom in hand,
met Sarah at the door to their apartment. She was wearing a pair of bicycle
shorts, an apricot facial mask, and a New England Patriots jersey tugged off
one shoulder in that stupid
Flashdance
style Sarah hated. Platinum-blonde hair dribbled from a lazy ponytail atop her
head. From the back bedroom, Dee Dee’s parakeet chirped its beak off.

“Where the
hell
were you? Do you have any
idea
what’s been going on around here? Little Petie’s having a nervous breakdown.”

In a daze, still processing her
error, Sarah brushed by her roommate. “The Copy King…burned down…I just saw
it.”

“Yeah, so did the cops. They were
here, by the way.” Dee Dee’s eyes were raccoon huge inside the giant holes in
her mask. “Getting dirt all over the goddamn floor. They had badges and guns
and shit.”

She shoved a dog-eared business
card at Sarah. On it was an officer’s name and phone number. “They were looking
for you.”

Chapter 5

“Maybe Jimmy torched the place,”
Emerson said.

“Why would he—his own
business?”

The reasoning occurred to Sarah at
the same time he started to say, “For the insurance money, of course. You said
he’s been under a lot of financial pressure. How convenient for the place to
burn down, and convenient about the waxer. Then he can blame it on you and call
it an accident.”

She didn’t want to think this about
Jimmy. Feeling numb, she plopped onto her futon.
Maybe that’s why he isn’t answering his phone.
“You think…you think
that’s why the police want to talk to me?” She’d held on to the detective’s
card for days, too afraid to call, too afraid to say she’d been stupid enough
to leave an ancient, rewired hand waxer plugged into an overloaded outlet before
heading out to meet her drug-dealing boyfriend. “They think…he did it?”

“Or they think you know something.
You were the last one out of the building. Maybe you saw someone suspicious
hanging around.”

“But I didn’t, I—” Then she
remembered. As she’d raced up to the video store, she’d noticed Jimmy’s car
still parked on Beacon Street. But that wasn’t unusual. He often stopped at the
neighborhood dive for a beer or two before heading home. Was that why he’d told
her not to stay too late? Had he planned on coming back?

“Sarah?” Emerson said. “Did you see
something?”

She could barely squeak out the
words. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then you should talk to the
police.”

“He needs the money, Em.”

“You’re going to take the fall for
him?”

“Take the fall for him?” A nervous
laugh escaped her. “It was an accident.”

“It’s potentially arson. If they
find evidence. And collusion, for you. Did he offer you money?”

“A check for two weeks’ salary came
in the mail today. With a note. He said he wished it could be more…” So did
Sarah. She thought again of the paycheck and cash she’d left in her drawer and that
the rent was due soon.

“Maybe he was making a vague
promise of a future bribe so you wouldn’t say anything bad about him to the
police. Or so you wouldn’t testify against him if—”

“Em…please. You’ve been reading too
many crime novels.”

He sniffed. “I just think that if
someone does something wrong, it should be his own neck on the line, not anyone
else’s because she was being nice and trying to protect him.”

“Too nice, you mean.”

He said nothing.

They’d had that argument too many
times.

“He’s not a criminal,” she said,
her voice softer. “For all we know it was the waxer and my fault. And if Jimmy
decides to take the money, then he should be able to do that. His family comes
first.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You’re out of a job.”

She sighed. She’d spent the last
three days trying not to think about that. “I’d be out of a job if it was arson
or the waxer or freaking Godzilla that burned the place down.”

He took a frustratingly long moment
before answering. She imagined Emerson, vexed at her sarcasm, his lower lip
tightening. “But if you’re out of a job and charged as an accessory to arson,
you could be out of a job for a very long time.”

“So I’ll become a writer.”

He ignored the comment. “You should
do the right thing.”

Smug.
Sanctimonious.
“I
am
doing the
right thing.”

“Covering for him isn’t right.”

“Morally, it’s right.”

“Legally and ethically, it’s
wrong.”

Sarah wanted to throw the phone
across the room. Except it was Dee Dee’s, and Sarah couldn’t afford to replace
it. “I remember somebody sold the same story to the same magazine twice, only
changing the woman’s hair color and nationality.”

“Sarah. That’s hardly on the same
level. That was fifty dollars, not a felony.”

* * * * *

After Sarah hung up the phone, she
stuck her tongue out at it. Emerson had no right to tell her she shouldn’t help
Jimmy, who’d treated her like family for the past eight years. True, the
twice-told sex tale was small potatoes. But what about Emerson’s mother? Had he
done the right thing by her? Covering for her all those years when she drank so
much, she couldn’t take care of his baby brother? Leaving the job to Emerson, a
boy who should have been out playing baseball and chasing girls, not raising a
child. Not putting his mother to bed. How long had Emerson made excuses when
she couldn’t show up at her various jobs, at parent-teacher meetings, even the
custody hearings when his father returned to take Thomas away?

I’m
not helpless
. Sarah sniffed back tears. And Emerson couldn’t change his
past by trying to shape her decisions. He had no right to tell her that anyone
in her life didn’t deserve whatever she wanted to give, right or wrong.