Gringo Page 8

  “Oh, no. No.” She turned to the sink and wiped at her face. “I should have washed some of those before I packed them. They’re dusty. Hand me some more of those paper towels, will you?”

  Daniel handed the roll to her and noticed her eyes were red. He dropped his gaze, embarrassed. “I’m dusty too. Here, let me wash my hands and I’ll help you wrap.”

  “Don’t use the right side.” When he looked at her, she explained. “The right side of the sink. It’s clogged. Use the left.”

  “I could try to unclog it for you.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not that simple. It’s the disposal. It broke… oh, years ago. He should have fixed it. But he didn’t.”

  “Your husband?”

  Ellie blinked and shook her head. “Do you think I should get rid of these plates?”

  He looked where she was pointing, at a row of decorative plates. Before he could answer, she started wrapping them up and putting them into the box.

  “These plates, you see. They just take up space. Like everything else. Nobody wants to buy a house full of my memories. They say it has to look empty. Impersonal. Don’t you think?”

  Daniel watched her wrap plates. “I guess so. I could try to fix your disposal.”

  “Oh, no. He... it’s broken.”

  “Your husband broke it? What happened?”

  She wadded newspapers loudly. “Nothing happened. It’s just broken. That’s all.”

  Daniel hesitated. Then he said, “So… your husband. He didn’t try to fix it?”

  She turned back to the crystal ware. “He was a salesman.”

  “What did he sell?”

  “Oh, what didn’t he sell. Salesmen are born, not trained, they say. He was selling all the time, everything. Sold me on this house, this city. Every word was a sale.” She picked up another glass. “He sold hardware. Not door to door. To businesses, you see. From a warehouse.”

  “That must have called for a lot of travel.”

  She pointed to the box with the plates. “All over.”

  Daniel chewed on his lip. How to ask? But he had to ask. He wanted it out in the open. “So…is he gone now?”

  “He left.”

  “Left?”

  “Yes.” Ellie stuffed the glass into the box and picked up another. “He left years ago.”

  “What do you mean he left?”

  “He left. He’s not here, is he? So he left.” She shrugged. “When he comes back, he’ll fix the disposal.”

  “Ellie…”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “OK…but, Ellie…”

  “He left like the rest of them. That’s all.”

  Daniel eyed her. She stood stock-still, holding a double handful of fine crystal. Her eyes were closed. “What about the rest of them? Where did they go?”

  “They went where they all go. Now… I said I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “I just thought—”

  “I don’t want to!” she screamed. The delicate glasses in her hands shattered. Glass and blood flew and Ellie fell to her knees before Daniel could move to catch her.

  “Shit. Hold on. Hold still.” He leaned her back against the counter and picked glass out of her slick, bleeding hands. She looked at them and shivered.

  “Blood,” she said. “See, dammit. See?”

  He nodded and rushed to the faucet, wetting a towel in the wrong sink, forgetting. The water did drain, but slowly. He rushed back to her and blotted her hands, one after the other. “Ellie, I think you need stitches. We need to get you to—”

  “No! I’m not going.”

  The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop. Daniel picked her up off the floor. She batted at him with her bloody hands and wailed.

  “I won’t go! I won’t! Put me down!”

  He carried her to the couch. “Hush, Ellie. Hush. I’m not making you go anywhere. Here. Just sit here.” He ran back to the kitchen and returned with more towels. He wiped and blotted the hands until he was sure there was no glass left, and then had her hold the towel while he went searching for bandages.

  The medicine cabinet was a disaster of items, new and old. Mostly old and unuseful. He fiddled with various items, considering their use, rejecting them. Bandaids. Too small. Iodine. God, no. Prescriptions for Herbert R. Neal. He wondered what the R stood for. Here were Herbert R. Neal’s antacid tablets. And his antidepressants. Well, that wasn’t a surprise, was it? They hadn’t worked though, apparently. Maybe he’d stopped taking them. He found a roll of gauze and some tape and went back to Ellie. She looked pale.

  Daniel began wrapping her hands up. One hand was worse than the other. He wished he’d been able to find some antibiotic ointment. Something. Not iodine, but something. “Ellie… even if you don’t need stitches, you’re bound to get infected. You need to see a doctor.”

  She shook her head adamantly. “No. They’re no good. Doctors. They never help. They don’t do anything.” She winced as he pressed down on the tape and adjusted the bandages. “They say they’ll take care of it, they say they’ll do everything they can, but they never do a thing. They make it worse. It’s just a machine, like a mangle. All they do is wring you out.” Tears ran down her face.

  Daniel brought her a glass of wine and helped her lean back. “It’s OK, Ellie. I’m sorry. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have asked. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  She held the wine awkwardly in bandaged hands and wept. Daniel lit a cigarette, then held it out for her. As she drank her wine, she grew calmer and leaned back on the couch. He took her cigarette from her and stubbed it out, watching her. She looked into the distance; then she closed her eyes.

  Daniel lit another cigarette. This one, he smoked himself. When he was sure she was asleep, he put the cigarette out and snuck away to the kitchen. He cleaned up the broken glass as quietly as he could. When he returned to the living room, she opened her eyes.

  “I know,” she said. “I know they didn’t leave.”

  Chapter 26

  When she stepped back from the door to let him in, he held up the box. It was a garbage disposal.

  “Why… Daniel Straub. You didn’t have to do that.” But she was smiling.

  He carried it through to the kitchen. Little to no progress had been made since the week before, although the bloody rags he’d left in the sink were gone. He eyed her hands and asked how they were.

  She held them up. “Fine. Not bad, see? But I think I’ll put off painting for another week.”

  He nodded and crouched in front of her sink, opening the cabinet doors and peering inside. “I’m going to need a screwdriver. Probably a flashlight would help, too. You have some tools?”

  “In the garage, there’s a box with tools,” she said, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a flashlight. She clicked it but it didn’t go on. “Needs batteries. I’ll try to find some.”

  He left her rummaging through drawers and went to the garage in search of tools. There were several tool boxes in various states of order. He found a few screwdrivers that looked about the right size and began looking for some pliers. He wished he’d thought to bring gloves. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with the disposal, but if it hadn’t worked for several years, he was sure it wouldn’t be pleasant to look at. He looked around; maybe he’d find some gloves he could use.

  There was an old dresser against the far wall and he saw some garden gloves sticking out of the jumble of items there, so he made his way to it. He slipped a glove on to see if it fit, and began looking for the mate. There, under those papers. He paused to look. They were sketches, about a dozen of them. Daniel put the gloves under his arm and leafed through the sketches. Had Herb done these? No, he decided, moving closer to the light. There was an E scrawled in the corner of each one. An E, for Ellie.

  So this man she’d been sketching must have been Herb? And the boy… What was his name? John? Daniel cast h
is mind back, thinking. No. Jonah. She’d sketched them, her men, sitting together and alone. He flipped those over and looked at the rest. Mostly flowers. A dog. Gringo? His eye was drawn to that one and he held it up. But his mind kept going back to the other ones.

  Ellie stuck her head in and flashed a light at him. “I found batteries. Are you… oh. My drawings.”

  He turned quickly, afraid of upsetting her again. “Sorry. Just looking. They’re good.”

  She snorted. “Well.” She motioned with the flashlight. “Did you find the screwdriver you need?”

  He set the drawings down carefully and held up the tools. “All set.”

  Underneath the sink, there were neat rows of cleaning products. He pulled them out so he could fit himself in and remove the old disposal. The screws were tight and he wrestled with them. Ellie hovered behind him, fidgeting.

  “Can I help with anything?”

  “No, I got it.” He donned the gloves and twisted the old disposal loose. He tried to avoid looking at it too closely, but he couldn’t completely avoid the smell. He set it in the garbage bag Ellie had laid out.

  She made a face. “I’m sorry. I tried to keep it as clean as I could. But it wouldn’t drain out, so…” She shrugged. “I’ve been putting bleach in there, to kill the germs.”

  Daniel nodded and fiddled with the opening, cleaning it out to make way for the new disposal. He handed her the flashlight. “Here, hold this for a minute. Just right…there.” He slipped the machine into place and lined up the bolt holes.

  “I didn’t know it was that easy to do.” The light shifted as Ellie bent over and peered in. “I thought it was… almost impossible. My husband made such a fuss. He made it sound…”

  The light disappeared from view. Daniel continued to tighten bolts in the darkness for a moment, then withdrew from under the sink and reached for the flashlight. Ellie was sitting on a stool nearby.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I felt a little dizzy.” She looked sheepishly at Daniel as he took the flashlight from her and returned to the project.

  “Don’t worry about it. Almost done.” He worked in silence for a while, then sat back on his heels to check the connections before plugging the disposal into the outlet. Ellie had returned to hovering behind him.

  “I think that should do it. Let’s see.” He turned on the water and watched it drain through for a moment, then flipped the switch. The new machine whirred into life. Ellie jumped back, startled.

  “Oh! I haven’t heard that for so long, I forgot how it sounds.”

  He turned it off. “Good to go. Just be careful what you put in there. No more bones.”

  “Wasn’t bones… it was celery.” Tears strolled down her face and she shivered as though a demon had blown in her ear.

  Daniel wiped his hands on a towel. “Well, celery’s a bad idea, yeah,” he said tentatively, as he gathered up the tools and put the cabinet back in order. “You can put orange peels in though. They smell nice. My mother always did that.”

  She drew a cleansing breath and wiped her face. “My mother used lemons. Fresh lemons.”

  “Oranges and Lemons… do you know that rhyme?”

  Ellie nodded. “Here comes a candle to light you to bed… here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”

  “I had forgotten about that part.”

  “So had I.”

  Chapter 27

  “Danny!” Margie held her finger up and waved at him from the other end of the bar. She pointed at the telephone. “Line one. It’s the guy from the brewing company again.”

  He nodded and excused himself from the customers he was talking to. Brewing company, she’d said. Which one? He’d been taking calls all week from brewing companies, and liquor distributors, and other suppliers. Unpaid bills. Unclear orders. Unsubmitted orders.

  He pressed the button, muttering under his breath. “Daniel here.”

  “Hey Dan, it’s Chip. We’ve got this invoice here…”

  Daniel listened and his head went up and down, back and forth. Of course the bill should be paid. Of course he’d make sure Bud was aware of it. What was the invoice number again? Would he mind faxing a copy of it over? It must be an oversight. Surely just an oversight.

  It was always an oversight. This was the fourth oversight this week. The second one today. If Bud didn’t get his head out of his ass, he was going to end up with serious vendor issues. Daniel finished the call and hung up. He knew Bud was under a lot of pressure, but this… this was too much. If he couldn’t deal with the paperwork, he should give it over to someone who could.

  Hector, maybe. Dan grinned at the thought, watching the young man flirt with one of the customers. The phone rang again and he answered it.

  “Oh, Dan, just the man I was looking for.” It was another supplier, calling about another overdue bill. When Daniel finished pacifying him and hung up, the phone rang again under his hand.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Daniel snarled, snatching the phone out of its cradle again. “Bud’s Tavern!”

  This time it was Bud. “Danny, hey.”

  “Bud. Listen, we—”

  But Bud didn’t listen. He went right on talking as though Daniel hadn’t said a thing. “Aud’s in intensive care. She had a heart attack, Danny. Bad one. She was shutting down. She’s barely there.”

  “Oh, Bud. I’m sorry.” Shit. “How are you holding up?”

  “Christ. I don’t know.” Bud sighed a wavery, wet-sounding sigh. “It’s been a rough night. She’s sleeping I guess, finally. How’s the bar?”

  “It’s…” It’s what? It’s about to run out of Vodka because you’re on past due status with most of the liquor distributors? “It’s fine, Bud. It’s been real busy. Say—”

  Bud chuckled hollowly. “Guess nobody took their resolutions seriously, did they?”

  “No,” Daniel said, and laughed. “They never do. Listen—”

  “Good thing, or we’d be bust.”

  Speaking of which… “You know, Bud…there’s some invoices—”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve just been... Listen, the doc wants to talk to me. I gotta run. Pray for us, Danny. We need all the help we can get for this one.” He hung up.

  Daniel looked at the telephone and shook his head. Well, it wasn’t his business, was it? He was doing all he could. If Bud didn’t pay the vendors, he wasn’t to blame.

  Still, he felt guilty every time they called about the money. He tried to explain the problem. It wasn’t a lack of funds, he was sure. They’d get paid eventually, he was sure. The vendors had let it go for a while, but now they sounded like they were… shutting down. Barely there, like Audrey had been. Ready to move on. He guessed if it came to that, he’d be forced to move on, too. Well, he’d done it before.

  Margie slapped a ticket on the bar and waited for the drinks. “What’s got you down, Danny?”

  He told her about Audrey. Before he had a chance to say Bud had asked for them, Margie was saying a prayer. She crossed herself and took up the tray of drinks. “That poor woman,” she said. “Life is just so fragile. How’s Bud doing?”

  Daniel shrugged. “He’s… I dunno. Distracted. Sounds worn out.”

  “I’ll bet.” Margie whirled away with her drinks, sneakers going squee, squee, squee, across the tiles. Daniel watched her go and wondered if she had new shoes. He didn’t remember them making that sound before.

  He wiped the bar down and took note of some supplies they needed, thinking about Bud and Audrey, and the way things change. There had been a time when he was sure he’d never tend bar again, back when his business had been successful. When his love still had legs. But when he’d lost those things, he’d gone to bartending automatically. He’d told himself it was just temporary. The first time he’d met Bud, Audrey had been standing behind him, holding a box of kittens. She’d fostered them – “Baked from scratch!” she'd said – and had brought them to the bar because two of the waitresses had expressed an
interest in adopting. She’d tried to sell Daniel on one of the remaining two kittens. In the years he’d been working here, Audrey had shown up at the bar with a box of baked-from-scratch foster kittens several times. She always tried to get him to take one of them. He always shook his head. He didn’t want a kitten. The last time, he’d asked her why she kept asking when she knew he would say no, and she’d told him that she was sure someday he’d change his mind. He’d laughed and told her some things never change.

  “Hey, Bright-eyes.” Margie stood in front of him, waving her hand. “Wake up.”

  “Sorry.” He took the ticket she handed him and began to make the drinks, but he was out of Grey Goose. Would they notice if he used another brand of vodka?

  “The guy was specific about Grey Goose. I’d better ask. What brands we got?”

  He suggested a brand, and she went back to her table. Squee, squee, squee. When she returned she rolled her eyes at him.

  “He’ll take it, but he’s not exactly happy about it. ‘How can you be out of something like that?’ he says. Like it’s my fault.”

  “Yeah.” Daniel mixed the drink, not wanting to tell her that if the customer ordered more than two refills, they were going to run out of this brand as well. “I’ve got an order in… just had a little mixup with the distributor, is all. Give him my apologies. This one’s on the house.”

  Ten minutes before Daniel’s shift ended, Bud called again. He spoke briefly to Margie, who came to Daniel in tears.

  Audrey’s kitten-fostering days were at an end. She was gone.

  Chapter 28

  “They were cute.” Daniel put down his brush and adjusted the ladder. “I always had to admit they were adorable.” He was talking to Ellie about Audrey: her foster kittens, that was. He’d begun the discussion with the idea he might work around to talking about Audrey’s death, thinking that maybe… but no. He’d decided – or one look at the bandages that still graced one of Ellie’s hands had decided for him – that it was better not to talk about death. Not today. Not yet.