'A Dirty Job Chapter 2\r'

'2\r\nA FINE ring\r\n on that points a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects naturalism †on that points mercy in a sharp blade. solely with time, as the edge w stiletto heels, does the real ache begin.\r\nSo Charlie was b bely even aware of his confess shrieks in Rachels hospital mode, of being sedated, of the filmy electric delirium that netted everything he did for that first day. After that, it was a memory pop of a sleepwalk, scenes filmed from a zombies eye socket, as he ambled undead finished explanations, accu sit downions, preparations, and ceremony.\r\nâ€Å"Its c altogethered a cerebral thromboembolism,” the doctor had give tongue to. â€Å"A blood coagulate forms in the legs or pelvis during labor, because moves to the brain, barren transfer the blood supply. Its very rare, merely it happens. at that place was nonhing we could do. Even if the crash team had been open to revive her, shed relieve superstarself had massive brai n damage. T here was no pain. She probably unless felt sleepy and passed.”\r\nCharlie whispe cherry- fierce to keep from screaming, â€Å"The piece in survey parking lot! He did something to her. He injected her with something. He was thither and he knew that she was dying. I saw him when I brought her CD choke.”\r\nThey showed him the security tapes †the nurse, the doctor, the hospitals administrators and lawyers †they only watched the black-and-white images of him leaving Rachels room, of the ex binglerate h exclusivelyway, of his returning to her room. No gangly black while dressed in mint green. They didnt even witness the CD.\r\nSleep deprivation, they verbalise. H whollyucination brought on by exhaustion. Trauma. They gave him drugs to sleep, drugs for anxiety, drugs for depression, and they displace him home with his bollocks up daughter.\r\nCharlies grey-headeder sister, Jane, held baffle Sophie as they spoke over Rachel and bury her on the assist day. He didnt remember picking unwrap a casket or making arrangements. It was more of the somnambulant hallucination: his in-laws moving to and fro in black, same tottering specters, spirt the inadequate clich??s of condolence: Were so sorry. She was so young. What a tragedy. If theres anything we can do…\r\nRachels father and have held him, their brainpowers pressed together in the apex of a tripod. The slate floor in the funeral-home foyer spot with their tears. Every time Charlie felt the shoulders of the older man heave with a sob, he felt his own heart break again. Saul took Charlies face in his hands and said, â€Å"You cant depend, beca employment I cant imagine.” But Charlie could imagine, because he was a Beta Male, and imagination was his curse; and he could imagine because he had lost Rachel and straight off he had a daughter, that tiny stranger sleeping in his sisters ramifications. He could imagine the man in mint green taking her.\r\ nCharlie looked at the tear-spotted floor and said, â€Å"Thats why approximately funeral homes are carpeted. Someone could slip.”\r\nâ€Å"Poor boy,” said Rachels m different. â€Å"Well amaze shivah with you, of course.”\r\nCharlie made his way across the room to his sister, Jane, who wore a mans ikon-breasted suit in charcoal grey pinstripe gabardine, that along with her severe eighties pop-star hairstyle and the infant in the pink blanket that she held, made her appear not so much androgynous as confused. Charlie impression the suit actually looked better on her than it did on him, besides she should have asked him for permission to wear it nonetheless.\r\nâ€Å"I cant do this,” he said. He let himself attain forward until the receded peninsula of dark hair touched her gelled crapper of Seagulls platinum flip. It let onmed kind deprivation the best posture for overlap grief, this forehead lean, and it reminded him of standing(a) drunkenly at a urinal and falling forward until his head hit the wall. Despair.\r\nâ€Å"Youre doing fine,” Jane said. â€Å"Nobodys considerably at this.”\r\nâ€Å"What the fucks a shivah?”\r\nâ€Å"I view its that Hindu god with all the arms.”\r\nâ€Å"That cant be right. The Goldsteins are going to sit on it with me.”\r\nâ€Å"Didnt Rachel t individually you anything just ab start being Jewish?”\r\nâ€Å"I wasnt paying attention. I mind we had time.”\r\nJane adjusted baby Sophie into a half-back, one-armed carry and gear up her free hand on the back of Charlies neck. â€Å"Youll be alright, take in.”\r\nSeven,” said Mrs. Goldstein. â€Å"Shivah bureau ‘seven. We used to sit for seven days, grieving for the dead, praying. Thats Orthodox, now nigh people just sit for three.”\r\nThey sat shivah in Charlie and Rachels apartment that overlooked the cable-car line of work at the corner of stonemason and Vallejo Streets. The building was a four-story brick Edwardian (architecturally, not quite the grand doxy c push throughure of the Victorians, but comme il faut tarty trim and trash to switch off a sailor down a side r break throughe) built later the earthquake and combustion of 1906 had leveled the whole area of what was now North Beach, Russian Hill, and Chinatown. Charlie and Jane had inherited the building, along with the thrift shop that active the ground floor, when their father died four years before. Charlie got the business, the large, double apartment theyd grown up in, and the upkeep on the old building, while Jane got half the rental in fix and one of the apartments on the top floor with a bespeak Bridge view.\r\nAt the instruction of Mrs. Goldstein, all the mirrors in the house were masked with black fabric and a large candle was placed on the drinking chocolate table in the center of the living room. They were supposed(a) to sit on low benches or cushions, incomple te of which Charlie had in the house, so, for the first time since Rachels cobblers last, he went down steps into the thrift shop flavor for something they could use. The back stairs descended from a pantry behind the kitchen into the stockroom, where Charlie kept his daub among boxes of merchandise waiting to be sorted, priced, and placed in the store.\r\nThe shop was dark provided for the light that filtered in the expect windowpane from the street lamps out on Mason Street. Charlie stood there at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the light switch, just staring. Amid the shelves of knickknacks and books, the piles of old radios, the presss of clothes, all of them dark, just lumpy composes in the dark, he could see objects glowing a dull red, nearly pulsing, like beating hearts. A sweater in the racks, a porcelain figure of a frog in a curio case, out by the front window an old Coca-Cola tray, a pair of shoes †all glowing red.\r\nCharlie flipped the switch, fluorescen t tubes fired to life across the ceiling, flickering at first, and the shop lit up. The red glow disappeared. â€Å"Okaaaaaaay,” he said to himself, calmly, like everything was just fine now. He flipped off the lights. freshness red stuff. On the counter, close to where he stood, there was a brass business-card holder cast in the shape of a whooping crane, glowing dull red. He took a second to study it, just to make received there wasnt some red light get-go from extraneous refracting just close to the room and making him precarious for no reason. He stepped into the dark shop, took a closer look, got an angle on the brass cranes. Nope, the brass was by all odds pulsing red. He rancid and ran back up the steps as fast as he could.\r\nHe nearly ran over Jane, who stood in the kitchen, rocking Sophie piano in her arms, talking baby talk beneath her breath.\r\nâ€Å"What?” Jane said. â€Å"I hit the sack you have some tough cushions down in the shop somewh ere.”\r\nâ€Å"I cant,” Charlie said. â€Å"Im on drugs.” He backed against the refrigerator, like he was retention it hostage.\r\nâ€Å"Ill go get them. Here, hold the baby.”\r\nâ€Å"I cant, Im on drugs. Im hallucinating.”\r\nJane cradled the baby in the crook of her right arm and put a free arm around her younger brother. â€Å"Charlie, you are on antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, not acid. tactual sensation around this apartment, theres not a person here thats not on something.” Charlie looked through the kitchen pass-through: women in black, most of them middle-aged or older, shaking their heads, men looking stoic, standing around the perimeter of the living room, each holding a stout tumbler of hard drink and staring into space.\r\nâ€Å"See, theyre all fucked up.”\r\nâ€Å"What about Mom?” Charlie nodded to their mother, who stood out among the other gray-haired women in black because she was draped in silver Nava ho jewelry and was so in darkness tanned that she appeared to be melting into her old-fashioned when she took a sip.\r\nâ€Å"Especially Mom,” Jane said. â€Å"Ill go look for something to sit shivah on. I dont know why you cant just use the couches. Now take your daughter.”\r\nâ€Å"I cant. I cant be trusted with her.”\r\nâ€Å"Take her, bitch!” Jane barked in Charlies ear †sort of a whisper bark. It had long agone been deter exploitd who was the Alpha Male between them and it was not Charlie. She handed off the baby and splay to the stairs.\r\nâ€Å"Jane,” Charlie called later her. â€Å"Look around before you turn on the lights. See if you see anything weird, okay?”\r\nâ€Å"Right. Weird.”\r\nShe left him standing there in the kitchen, studying his daughter, thinking that her head might be a little oblong, but despite that, she looked a little like Rachel. â€Å"Your florists chrysanthemum loved Aunt Jane,” he said. â€Å"They used to rout up on me in Risk †and Monopoly †and arguments †and cooking.” He slid down the fridge door, sat splayed-legged on the floor, and buried his face in Sophies blanket.\r\nIn the dark, Jane barked her shin on a wooden box full of old telephones. â€Å"Well, this is just stupid,” she said to herself, and flipped on the lights. Nothing weird. Then, because Charlie was galore(postnominal) things, but one of them was not crazy, she turned off the lights again, just to be sure that she hadnt missed something. â€Å"Right. Weird.”\r\nthither was nothing weird about the store except that she was standing there in the dark rub her shin. But then, right before she turned on the light again, she saw soulfulness peering in the front window, making a cup around his look to see through the reflection of the streetlights. A homeless person kat rope or drunken tourist, she thought. She moved through the dark shop, between columns of comi c books stacked on the floor, to a spot behind a rack of jackets where she could get a clear view of the window, which was change with cheap cameras, vases, belt buckles, and all manner of objects that Charlie had judged sacred of interest, but ostensibly not costy of a smash-and-grab.\r\nThe guy looked tall, and not homeless, nicely dressed, but all in a single light color, she thought it might be yellow, but it was hard to report under the streetlights. Could be light green.\r\nâ€Å"Were closed,” Jane said, loud liberal to be heard through the glass.\r\nThe man outside peered around the shop, but couldnt spot her. He stepped back from the window and she could see that he was, indeed, tall. Very tall. The streetlight caught the line of his cheek as he turned. He was also very thin and very black.\r\nâ€Å"I was looking for the owner,” the tall man said. â€Å"I have something I need to show him.”\r\nâ€Å"Theres been a death in the family,” Jane s aid. â€Å"Well be closed for the week. Can you come back in a week?”\r\nThe tall man nodded, looking up and down the street as he did. He rocked on one foot like he was about to bolt, but kept stopping himself, like a sprinter melodic line against the starting blocks. Jane didnt move. There were always people out on the street, and it wasnt even late yet, but this guy was too anxious for the situation. â€Å"Look, if you need to get something appraised †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"No,” he cut her off. â€Å"No. Just tell him shes, no †tell him to look for a package in the mail. Im not sure when.”\r\nJane smiled to herself. This guy had something †a brooch, a coin, a book †something that he thought was worth some money, maybe something hed prime in his grandmothers closet. Shed seen it a dozen times. They acted like theyve found the lost city of Eldorado †theyd come in with it tucked in their coats, or wrapped in a yard layers of tissue paper and tape. (The more tape, generally, the more execrable the item would turn out to be †there was an equation there somewhere.) Nine times out of ten it was crap. Shed watched her father try to finesse their self and gently lower the owners into disappointment, convince them that the sentimental mensurate made it priceless, and that he, a lowly secondhand-store owner, couldnt presume to put a value on it. Charlie, on the other hand, would just tell them that he didnt know about brooches, or coins, or whatever they had and let someone else bear the bad news.\r\nâ€Å"Okay, Ill tell him,” Jane said from her wrap behind the coats.\r\nWith that, the tall man was away, taking great praying-mantis strides up the street and out of view. Jane shrugged, went back and turned on the lights, then proceeded to search for cushions among the piles.\r\nIt was a medium-large store, taking up nearly the whole tooshie floor of the building, and not particularly well organized, as eac h system that Charlie adopted seemed to collapse after a few weeks under its own weight, and the outlet was not so much a jumbal of organizational systems, but a garden of twin piles. Lily, the maroon-haired Goth girl who worked for Charlie three afternoons a week, said that the fact that they ever found anything at all was proof of the chaos theory at work, then she would walk away muttering and go out in the alley to smoke clove cigarettes and inspect into the Abyss. (Although Charlie noted that the Abyss looked an awful lot like a Dumpster.)\r\nIt took Jane ten minutes to navigate the aisles and mother three cushions that looked wide enough and thick enough that they might work for sitting shivah, and when she returned to Charlies apartment she found her brother curled into the fetal position around baby Sophie, asleep on the kitchen floor. The other mourners had whole forgotten about him.\r\nâ€Å"Hey, doofus.” She nudged his shoulder with her toe and he rolled onto his back, the baby still in his arms. â€Å"These okay?”\r\nâ€Å"Did you see anything glowing?”\r\nJane dropped the stack of cushions on the floor. â€Å"What?”\r\nâ€Å"Glowing red. Did you see things in the shop glowing, like pulsating red?”\r\nâ€Å"No. Did you?”\r\nâ€Å"Kind of.”\r\nâ€Å"Give em up.”\r\nâ€Å"What?”\r\nâ€Å"The drugs. Hand them over. Theyre obviously much better than you led me to believe.”\r\nâ€Å"But you said they were just antianxiety.”\r\nâ€Å"Give up the drugs. Ill watch the kid while you shivah.”\r\nâ€Å"You cant watch my daughter if youre on drugs.”\r\nâ€Å"Fine. descent the crumb snatcher and go sit.”\r\nCharlie handed the baby up to Jane. â€Å"You have to keep Mom out of the way, too.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh no, not without drugs.”\r\nâ€Å"Theyre in the medicine cabinet in the master bath. Bottom shelf.”\r\nHe was sitting on the floor now, ru bbing his forehead as if to poke out the skin out over his pain. She kneed him in the shoulder.\r\nâ€Å"Hey, kid, Im sorry, you know that, right? Goes without saying, right?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah.” A weak smile.\r\nShe held the baby up by her face, then looked down in adoration, Mother of Jesus style. â€Å"What do you think? I should get one of these, huh?”\r\nâ€Å"You can borrow mine whenever you need to.”\r\nâ€Å"Nah, I should get my own. I already feel bad about borrowing your wife.”\r\nâ€Å"Jane!”\r\nâ€Å"Kidding! Jeez. Youre much(prenominal) a wuss sometimes. Go sit shivah. Go. Go. Go.”\r\nCharlie collected the cushions and went to the living room to grieve with his in-laws, nervous because the only prayer he knew was â€Å"Now I drop off Me Down to Sleep,” and he wasnt sure that was going to cut it for three full days.\r\nJane forgot to mention the tall guy from the shop.\r\n'