Chapter Five

The ambulance siren culls a curious crowd. The lights awaken the deaf. William wishes for a single bomb. One giant mess he could clean with no more sleepless nights wasted fearing the telephone’s ring.

Groups of Bathrobes and House Slippers gather as if the initial shotgun blast had, without a doubt, been the last. The first strangers approach the bustle, feigning a reason to be outside wearing sleepwear in white November weather. By the time the almost-dead woman rides a gurney from the house, these neighbors bump each other for front row vantage.

The players—the paramedics, the gurney, William’s own interest—all work to peak the neighborhood curiosity. Whispers circulate the crowd. Soft speech and subtle glances. They divide into smaller groups, accusations shaping faces into blame. Finger pointing and shallow gasps.

“So how do we do this?” Philip asks. They stand as close as unconcerned paramedics will allow, watching this woman rolled out from the basement. Her skin reflects a suffocated blue even under the rising sun. Her throat sprouts tubes and packed gauze. Philip watches the entire display, silence between the two of them, before turning to William. “I’ll ride in the ambulance, then.”

William lights a cigarette and stares. He sympathizes with the ritual of the gurney and all the straps securing the body. He relates to the struggle these paramedics must feel. He understands the endurance necessary for a defeated venture, the obligation to keep something alive when really you trust in this option for escape. Find a body, clean it up. Move on to the next.

“Don’t you think we should go?” Philip asks. “It seems someone should be there.”

“They’ll call family.”

“Until then, though.”

Philip believes that people deserve chances. William believes that people are the exact reason chances don’t work. He considers Philip’s general benevolence toward humanity—and the support his friend could garner from this artificial crowd should this situation take a turn toward rhetoric—and he accepts that one of them will be riding in the ambulance. He jams his cigarette nub into his mouth and holds out his hands, a fist resting in an open palm. “Paper, rock, scissors.”

“You’re disturbed,” Philip says. He jumps into the cab of the ambulance after a few short words with a paramedic. The doors close. William can see Philip’s face still twisted in the passenger mirror. He inhales, the turnout a success.

Philip’s experience with social interaction is limited. He is not a lady-killer. He’s the average guy. Average income. Average clothes. Average eating habits. He is more concerned with keeping his bed made than keeping it full, a heart stronger than his libido. William isn’t surprised that Philip feels the need to be a waking image to this woman. The man has a soft spot for destroyed women. He’s almost married two since William has known him. It’s the law of odds, really, that a dying woman from a job site would someday sway him.

The crowd remains, cocooned within whispers. William accepts the recognition, enjoys it perhaps, but carefully contains any budding smile. The Bathrobes and House Slippers cup their mouths and stare. They nudge and push each other, coaxing, wagering as to who is brave enough to approach the man who found the body in the basement. The cleaning supplies and spotted clothes might give into the impression that William is unapproachable. And he has no problem feeding this conception.

The Bathrobes and House Slippers eventually dwindle. They turn away, whispers growing into real voices as their distance from William increases. A wall of backsides surround. Words like “possibility” and “that guy” catch him at their weakest moments, quiet almost to silence, but they reach him still.

A few remain, dirty Bathrobes mostly, but some bright House Slippers are determined. They watch William as he loads supplies into his van. He is not accessible to them; he is mere entertainment. It is not until he gets to the o-zone generator—a two-person lift—that a short man with a robe, soft like puppy fur, approaches. He offers no help, only company and a smile.

The man looks up to the house, never to William, and says, “Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Sure. It’s sad,” William says. “Disgusting.”

“You know, I thought so at first.” The words pour out. “But

I’ve seen a lot of ‘em. They go when they need to go.” “Well, this one’s ready to go.”

“I’ll agree. It’s never something you want to think about but you’ve got to consider that maybe she’s just not fit to keep going. That maybe she’s flawed and it’s just a procreation thing.”

Puppy Fur offers an uncertain look. It’s his eyes. His smile remains concrete, hard but lacking emotion.

“Like dog breeding,” William says. “Nature cannot produce perfect specimens all on its own. Human interference, controlled breeding—hence perfect dogs—are created repeatedly.”

The man flattens his grin.

“It is a bit militant, but I’ve see so many of these that I can’t explain. This one is actually one of the cleaner ones. I wish I had a camera most of the time. You ever seen a fat man melted to his toilet? I have. It happens because people aren’t perfect, and if maybe we can get perfection we can stop sad things like this.” He waits a few moments. “It’s just an idea of mine.”

“No, it’s okay. She’s always been an eyesore. Most of us around here are ready to see her go.”

William’s eyes widen. “You knew her?” “What?”

William looks into the man’s crooked face and realizes at that moment that he had been talking about the house the entire time, not the woman.

“Well, you’ve got to realize what the thing does to the neighborhood. Brings the value of everything down just a bit. We’ve been getting petitions around, setting up meetings with the city, doing everything we can to try and get this house down. It’s been here, unoccupied for the better part of twenty years—aside from the squatter you found.” He tosses his head to the side, eyes still on the house. “I live just next door so it affects me the most.”

William looks down to see that Puppy Fur ’s grass and this house’s grass are identical. Trimmed to seamless. “Nice yard,” he offers only half invested in its sentiment. It is a nice yard, but William doesn’t care.

“Yeah, I go ahead and do this lawn. It’s all I can really do for now. I love this neighborhood, you know. It’s a fascinating place. I want it to look great.”

Cars begin pulling out of driveways lining the street. It’s the normal work hour for most of the world and what strikes William as most awkward about this entire situation is that every car flaunts the same shade of beige. People around here seem to have found the pinnacle of existence in this color and the rest of life means just seeing it all through to the end.

“How’s the hand,” Puppy Fur asks, almost chuckling. “Dog got me.”

The man nods and walks away, throwing a soft pat to William’s back as he turns. “Make sure you clean it,” he says over his shoulder. “You never know the kinds of things a dog bite can plant inside of you.”

Mrs. Rose, a close friend, once told William that people never change. She explained that change is only our understanding of A to B, that in truth A never started and B will never end.

She also told William that people who use the word fascinating, usually aren’t.

He leaves the o-zone generator on the front lawn, planning to retrieve it tomorrow with Philip. By that time its weight and its metal feet will have yellowed the lawn enough for a scar, something the Puppy Fur Bathrobe will cart in specialized fertilizers to correct. William chalks his own audacity up to spite but on a separate level entirely feels a little bad because the lawn does look nice.

When William gets home, he falls to the couch. He sleeps in his pants, their new stains setting deep under his weight, their fumes shaping the air his fiancée and child breathe.