Please (16 page)

"Is he really dead?" I asked, stopping beside Eden and turning the camera on the fallen man.

"This isn't John Cusack," Eden said.

I zoomed in on the other man. It was true. He had dark hair, but other than that he didn't look anything like Cusack. He stared up at us, his mouth pushing out little pink bubbles. His body looked broken in ways I hadn't been able to imagine before.

"I don't know what I was thinking," Eden added.

"I told you," I said.

"This isn't the time for that."

"We should really get out of here," I said. But it was already too late. A cop pulled up then, parking behind the Acura. He had one of those little cameras mounted on his dash, and I filmed it filming us.

The cop talked into his radio for a moment, then got out and started walking toward us. He stopped for a long moment to look at Randall, who'd passed out against the window. "What happened to this guy?" he asked.

"It's all right," I said, "he's an actor."

The cop stared at Randall for a moment longer, then came over to stand beside us. All three of us looked down at the other man. An escaped crab scuttled past our feet, under the car.

"Which one of you was driving?" the cop asked. He scratched the back of his neck and belched softly.

"I was," Eden sighed.

The cop shook his head. "You'd be the one in a world of trouble then." He took out his notepad and started writing.

"Shouldn't you be doing something?" I asked him, pointing at the man on the ground.

"Somebody will be along shortly," he said.

Eden sat on the ground and tore off his cavalry hat. I saw his whole head was covered in that rash. "Why is this always happening to me?" he asked, starting to cry.

What could I do? I went over and sat beside him, put my arm around his shoulder. Together we watched the other man. He wasn't blinking any more, and he only took a breath every now and then. I turned off the camera and put it on the ground.

I was never going to see my hundred dollars again.

Later, when the ambulance had arrived, the cop made Eden get into the back seat of his cruiser.

"Do you think he's going to be all right?" Eden asked, still looking at the fallen man.

"Oh yeah," the cop laughed, just before he shut the door. "He'll live forever."

HELL BELIEVES IN YOU By Peter Darbyshire

LOOKING BACK ON IT NOW, I think it was the Mormons who robbed me. The two of them had been wandering around the neighbourhood for a couple of days before it happened, knocking on doors, seeing who was home and who wasn't. They even had little pads of paper that they made notes on. I knew they were Mormons because they wore white shirts and those black name tags.

One morning they came to my house. They were both wearing sunglasses. I couldn't see anything but my own reflection in them. "We'd like to talk to you about Hell," the one on the left said when I answered the door. He smiled like there wasn't anything else he'd rather be talking about.

"I don't really believe in Hell," I told him.

He looked over my shoulder, into my apartment. I could smell cigarette smoke on him now. "If we could just come in for a moment," he said.

"I'm just on my way to work," I told them.

"When's a good time for us to come back?" he asked.

"I work all the time," I said.

I started to close the door, but the other Mormon stopped it with his foot. "It doesn't matter whether you believe in Hell," he said. "Hell believes in you."

I ACTUALLY WAS WORKING during this time, as an enumerator. It was a temporary sort of thing I found through the paper. My job was to knock on people's doors and register them to vote. I was working with a man named Lincoln. It was the kind of job one person could do, but they made us work in pairs anyway. The woman who hired me said that people were more willing to open the door to pairs than to individuals.

Sometimes Lincoln talked about the neighbourhood where he lived. "It's all students," he told me one time. "Every time I walk out the door, I'm reminded of all the ways my life has gone wrong since I left school. But the rent is cheap."

"I could never live like a student again," I told him.

"I don't live like a student," he said. "I live in the same neighbourhood as students."

"What's the difference?" I asked.

"And there are benefits," he went on. "The woman who lives across the street doesn't have any blinds."

"Why not?" I asked.

"How should I know?" he said. "Maybe she can't afford them, or maybe she just likes people looking at her. Anyway, the point is that I can watch her any time I want."

"Does she change in front of her windows?" I asked.

"No, it's nothing like that," he said. "I just watch her doing her regular house stuff. You know, cooking dinner, talking on the phone, that kind of thing."

"So you don't watch her change?" I asked.

"Well, sometimes," he admitted, "but that's not really what I'm interested in."

"There's something not right with you," I told him.

WE MET ALL SORTS working that job. One man invited us in for beer. He looked like the kind of guy who played hockey every week. His furniture was all black leather. We sat at his kitchen table and did the paperwork there. Some sort of Christian talk show was coming from the radio. The voices were low and soothing. The table was already covered with empty beer bottles even though it was only noon.

When I asked the man how many people lived there, he stared out the window, into his backyard. There was a riding lawn mower parked in the middle of the yard. Half the lawn was cut and the rest was overgrown.

"I'm not sure," he finally said.

"You don't know how many people live here?" I asked him.

"It used to be me and my wife," he said, "but now ... I just don't know any more."

"Well, we can only enter definite residents," I told him, "so I'll just put down one."

He didn't say anything else, didn't even move for a moment. Then he put his face in his hands and started to cry.

Lincoln and I got up and went back outside. The man followed us, still crying. "You haven't finished your beers," he said through his tears. "You have to stay and finish your beers."

"We're working," I told him as I went down the steps of his porch. "We have jobs to do."

ANOTHER TIME WE walked past a man who was dying, although we didn't know he was dying at the time. He was on the other side of the street, leaning on the inside of the white wooden fence surrounding his yard. He waved at us with a handful of mail, and I waved back, kept on walking. It was only when we went down the other side of the street, maybe fifteen minutes later, that I saw he was dead.

He was lying face down in the grass, the letters scattered around him. The wind had blown a postcard underneath the fence and onto the sidewalk at our feet. I could see ants crawling around the top of his bald head already.

"I'm guessing a heart attack," Lincoln said, looking down at him. "What do you think?"

"I think we'd better do something," I said.

"Do you know CPR?" Lincoln asked.

"I've been meaning to take one of those courses," I said, "but I just never got around to it."

"We'd better not do anything then," he said. "We could make things worse."

"He's not breathing," I said. "How worse can it get?"

"I meant worse for us," he said.

"Well, we can't just stand here," I said. "We're government employees. We have to do something." I went to walk through the gate, but Lincoln stopped me. "He's on private property," he said. "Think of the lawsuits." He took out his cell phone and called an ambulance. "We'll let someone else worry about it," he told me when he was done.

I reached down and picked up the postcard while we waited for the ambulance to arrive. The front was a picture of the Eiffel Tower. On the back someone had written in red ink: "Hi Mom and Dad! Last stop! See you soon! Love, Kathy!"

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics didn't even look at us. They knelt beside the man at the same time the door of the house opened and a woman stepped out. She was wearing a housecoat and holding a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked at the ambulance, at us standing there, and then at the dead man and the paramedics. "Oh my God," she said and dropped the coffee cup. It broke at her feet, and the coffee sprayed as far as the dead man. I dropped the postcard back to the ground. I don't think she noticed me reading it.

"We'd better come back for this one later," Lincoln said.

IT WAS ONLY AFTER we'd done a few more houses that I remembered. "Oh my God," I said. "I waved at him."

"What are you talking about?" Lincoln asked, looking around the street. "Waved at who?"

"That dead man," I said. "He was trying to get our attention and all I did was wave at him."

"How were you supposed to know?"

"Imagine that," I said. "You're dying, and the last thing you see is me waving at you."

"It's sure not what I'd want to see in that situation," Lincoln said.

"This is going to haunt me forever," I said.

"Well, don't let it get you down," he said. "We're on a schedule here."

IT WAS AFTER THIS that the break-ins started. I came home one day after work to find my door unlocked and a half-eaten sandwich and a cigarette butt in the sink. Neither had been there when I'd left that morning. And I didn't smoke anyway.

I went around my apartment with the only knife I owned, a small steak knife with a broken tip. I looked in all the rooms and closets, but I couldn't see any other signs of anyone else having been there. And nothing had been taken. Whoever it was that had broken in had made themselves a sandwich, smoked the cigarette, and then left.

I phoned my landlord. He was a lawyer who owned buildings all over the city. I'd never actually seen him, as he'd sent his secretary over to show me around the place.

"Were you in my apartment today?" I asked him.

"Why would I want to go into your apartment?" he asked.

"Well, someone was in here today while I was gone," I told him. "They made a sandwich and had a cigarette."

"People shouldn't be smoking in there," he said. "It stains the walls."

"I'm concerned someone might have an extra key," I said. "Or maybe the lock is easy to pick."

"I guess you'd better change your lock then," he said.

"I was kind of hoping you'd do that," I said.

"It's not in our agreement," he pointed out.

"How much would another lock cost me?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said. "Fifty or sixty bucks, plus labour."

"Well, maybe they won't come back," I said.

I WENT BACK to the dead man's house after work one day and rang the doorbell. The same woman answered the door, still in her housecoat. Her eyes were so red it looked as if all the blood vessels in them had burst. She stared at me like she had no idea who I was until I said, "I was here when your husband died."

She looked at me a moment longer, then said, "You called the ambulance."

"Well, I was with the man who called the ambulance," I said, but she was already walking back into the house. "I've just put some coffee on," she called over her shoulder.

I followed her down the hall to her kitchen. The walls of the hall were lined with framed family photographs. I tried not to look at any of them.

The woman sat me down at a wooden table in the kitchen and poured me a cup of coffee. There was a bowl of apples in the middle of the table, with unopened letters piled around it. I saw the postcard I'd read underneath one of the envelopes.

The woman sat down across from me, picked an apple out of the bowl and started polishing it on her housecoat. I tried the coffee. It was strong and bitter, but I didn't say anything. Fruit flies drifted around my face.

"Well," the woman finally said. "What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to apologize," I said. "About your husband's death ..."

"That's very kind of you," she said. She put the apple back in the bowl and took out another one. They all looked polished to me already.

"No, that's not what I meant," I said. "I meant, I wish I could have done more."

"He had a bad heart," she said. "There's nothing anyone could have done."

"He waved at me," I told her. "I didn't know what he wanted."

She paused in polishing the apple for a second, then resumed, but slower. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I just waved back," I went on. "I didn't know."

"What are you trying to tell me?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Maybe I could have saved him."

She put the apple back in the bowl but didn't take another one.

"If I would have known," I said.

"What do you want from me?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"Get out," she told me.

"I just wanted you to know I wish I could have done more."

She got up and came around the table. I thought she was going to hit me, but instead she picked up my coffee cup and went over to the sink with it. "Get out," she said again and emptied the cup into the sink.

AT NIGHT I DREAMED about the people we'd enumerated that day. Only now they were all dead, like zombies. They opened the doors to their houses and shuffled down the sidewalk after me, worms writhing in their eye sockets. And when they met each other in the street they fought, tearing into each other with their teeth and ripping each other's limbs off. The streets ran with blood. It was so deep I had to wade through it. And the more they killed each other, the deeper it got, until it was flowing into their houses and threatening to drown me.

It was the same thing every night.

THE SECOND TIME my place was broken into, they made sandwiches again, but this time they also took all my CDs and videos. I went around the apartment but couldn't find anything else missing. I called the police this time.

A single cop showed up an hour later. He wandered around the apartment, making notes in a little black book and looking at all the photos on my wall.

"Aren't you going to dust for fingerprints or anything like that?" I asked.

"For some CDs and videos?" he asked and shook his head. He stopped by my bookshelf and studied the books on it.