A Dirty Job Chapter 3

3BENEATH THE NUMBER FORTY-ONE BUSIt was two weeks egress front Charlie left the apartment and walked down to the auto-teller on Colum charabanc Avenue where he firstborn killed a guy. His weapon of choice was the number forty- 1 carriage, on its way from the Trans Bay station, by the Bay Bridge, to the Presidio, by the G h mavinst-to-goden in tout ensembleow Bridge. If youre freeing to get hit by a peck in San Francisco, you want to go with the forty-one, because you can pretty much figure on there being a nice bridge view.Charlie hadnt re whollyy counted on killing a guy that morning. He had hoped to get some mid-twenties for the memoir at the thrift s bust, check his balance, and maybe pick up some yellow mustard at the deli. (Charlie was non a embrown mustard kind of guy. Brown mustard was the condiment equivalent of skydiving it was ok for race-car number one woods and serial killers, exactly for Charlie, a fine line of Frenchs yellow was either(a) the spice that life required.) After the funeral, friends and relatives had left a mountain of inhuman cuts in Charlies fridge, which was all hed ea ten for the past two weeks, yet now he was down to ham, mysterious rye, and pre obscure Enfamil varianceula, none of which was toler fit without yellow mustard. Hed secured the yellow splosh bottle and felt safer now with it in his jacket goop, but when the bus hit the guy, mustard completely slipped Charlies mind.It was a warm day in October, the light had gone autumn soft all over the city, the summer fuzziness had ceased its relentless crawl out of the Bay each morning, and there was on the button enough breeze that the few sailboats that dotted the Bay looked like they come about executive energise been posing for an Impressionist painter. In the split second that Charlies dupe buildd that he was being run over, he might non control been happy about the regular(a)t, but he couldnt have picked a nicer day for it.The guys notice wa s William brook. He was thirty-two and worked as a commercialize analyst in the financial district, where he had been headed that morning when he inflexible to stop at the auto-teller. He was wearing a light woolen suit and running shoes, his work shoes were tucked into a strap sit downchel under his arm. The handle of a compact umbrella protruded from the side pocket of the satchel, and it was this that caught Charlies attention, for while the handle of the umbrella appeared to be make of faux walnut tree burl, it was glowing a dull red as if it had been heated in a forge.Charlie s alsod in the ATM line laborious not to notice, trying to appear uninterested, but he couldnt help but stare. It was glowing, for fucks sake, didnt anyone search it?William Creek glanced over his shoulder as he slid his card into the machine, motto Charlie flavor at him, wherefore tried to will his suit coat to fill out into prominent manta-ray wings to resist Charlies view as he key in his PIN number. Creek snatched his card and the expectorated cash from the machine, turned, and headed away pronto toward the corner.Charlie couldnt stand it any longer. The umbrella handle had begun to pulsate red, like a beating realizet. As Creek reached the reassure to it, Charlie express, Excuse me. Excuse me, sirWhen Creek turned, Charlie said, Your umbrella At that point, the number forty-one bus was coming by means of the ware at Columbus and Vallejo at about thirty-five miles per hour, angling toward the curb for its next stop. Creek looked down at the satchel under his arm where Charlie was pointing, and the leaper of his running shoe caught the slight rise of the curb. He started to lose his balance, the assort of thing we all might do on any effrontery day while walking through the city, trip on a crack in the paving and take a couple of agile steps to regain equilibrium, but William Creek took only one step. Back. deign to the curb.You cant really sugarcoat i t at this point, can you? The number forty-one bus creamed him. He flew a good fifty feet through the air onward he hit the patronage window of a SAAB like a great gabardine sack of meat, accordingly bounced back to the pavement and commenced to guck fluids. His belongings the satchel, the umbrella, a gold tie bar, a Tag Heuer view skittered on down the street, ricocheting off tires, shoes, manhole screenings, some coming to rest cockeyedly a block away.Charlie stood at the curb trying to breathe. He could hear a tooting well(p), like someone was blowing a toy train whistle it was all he could hear, thus someone ran into him and he realized it was the sound of his own rhythmic whimpering. The guy the guy with the umbrella had just been wiped out of the world. People rushed, crowded more(prenominal) or less, a dozen were barking into cell phones, the bus driver nearly flattened Charlie as he rushed down the sidewalk toward the carnage. Charlie staggered after him.I was just going to ask him No one looked at Charlie. It had taken all of his will, as well as a pep talk from his sister, to leave the apartment, and now this?I was just going to tell him that his umbrella was on fire, Charlie said, as if he was explaining to his accusers. But no one acc employ him, really. They ran by him, some headed toward the personify, some away from it they batted him around and looked back, baffled, like theyd collided with a rough air current or a ghost instead of a man.The umbrella, Charlie said, looking for the evidence. Then he spot it, almost down at the next corner, lying in the gutter, dormant glowing red, pulsating like failing neon. there See But good deal were gathered around the dead man in a vast semicircle, their hands to their mouths, and no one was paying any attention to the panic-struck thin man spouting nonsense dirty dog them.He meander his way through the crowd toward the umbrella, determined now to confirm his conviction, too fa r in shock to be afraid. When he was only ten feet away from it he looked up the street to make sure another(prenominal) bus wasnt coming before he ventured off the curb. He looked back just as a delicate, tar-black hand snaked out of the storm drainpipe and snatched the compact umbrella off the street.Charlie backed away, looking around to try if anyone had seen what he had seen, but no one had. No one make up made eye contact. A policeman trotted by and Charlie grabbed his sleeve as he passed, but when the cop spun around and his eyes went wide with confusion, then what appeared to be real terror, Charlie let him go. Sorry, he said. Sorry. I can see youve got work to do sorry.The cop shuddered and pushed through the crowd of onlookers toward the battered body of William Creek.Charlie started running, across Columbus and up Vallejo, until his breath and heartbeat in his ears drowned all the sounds of the street. When he was a block away from his shop a great shadow moved over hi m, like a low-flying aircraft or a huge bird, and with it Charlie felt a chill vibrate up his back. He lowered his head, pumped his arms, and rounded the corner of Mason just as the cable car was passing, full of smiling tourists who looked right through him. He glanced up, just for a second, and he thought he saw something above, vanish over the roof of the six-story Victorian across the street, then he bolted through the front door of his shop.Hey, boss, Lily said. She was sixteen, pale, and a little bottom heavy her grown-woman form still in flux between baffle fat and baby bearing. Today her hair happened to be lavender fifties-housewife helmet hair in Easter-basket cellophane pastel.Charlie was bent-grass over, leaning against a case full of curios by the door, sucking in deep raspy gulps of secondhand store mustiness. I think I just killed a guy, he gasped.Excellent, Lily said, ignoring equally his message and his demeanor. Were going to extremity change for the reg ister.With a bus, Charlie said.Ray called in, she said. Ray Macy was Charlies other employee, a thirty-nine-year-old knight bachelor with an unhealthy lack of boundaries between the Internet and reality. Hes flying to Manila to go through the love of his life. A Ms. LoveYouLongTime. Rays convinced that they are soul mates.There was something in the sewer, Charlie said.Lily examined a chip in her black nail polish. So I cut school to cover. Ive been doing that since youve been, uh, gone. Im going to need a strike off.Charlie stood up and made his way to the snack bar. Lily, did you hear what I said?He grabbed her by the shoulders, but she spun out of his grasp. Ouch Fuck. Back off, Asher, you sado freak, thats a new tattoo. She punched him in the arm, hard, and backed away, detrition her own shoulder. I heard, you. Cease your trippin, sil vous plat. Lately, since discovering Baudelaires Fleurs du Mal in a stack of used sustains in the back room, Lily had been peppering her speec h with French phrases. French better expresses the key noirness of my existence, she had said.Charlie put both hands on the counter to keep them from shaking, then spoke slowly and deliberately, like he was speaking to someone for whom slope was a second language Lily, Im having kind of a bad month, and I appreciate that you are throwing away your education so you can come here and alienate customers for me, but if you dont sit down and disposition me a little tooshie human decency, then Im going to have to let you go.Lily sat down on the chrome-and-vinyl radical diner stool behind the register and pulled her long lavender bangs out of her eyes. So you want me to pay close attention to your confession to murder? Take notes, maybe get an old cassette recorder off the shelf and get everything down on show? Youre saying that by trying to ignore your obvious distress, which I would have to later recall to the police, so I can be in person responsible for sending you to the gas cham ber, that Im being inconsiderate?Charlie shuddered. Jeez, Lily. He was continually surprised at the speed and accuracy of her creepiness. She was like some creepiness boor prodigy. But on the bright side, her extreme darkness made him realize that he probably wasnt going to go to the gas chamber.It wasnt that kind of killing. There was something following me, and Silence Lily put her hand up, Id rather not show my employee spirit by committing every detail of your heinous crime to my photographic memory to be recalled in court later. Ill just say that I saw you but you seemed normal for someone without a clue.You dont have a photographic memory.I do, too, and its a curse. I can never immobilise the futility of You forgot to take out the trash at least eight generation last month.I didnt forget.Charlie took a deep breath, the familiarity of arguing with Lily was actually appeasement him down. Okay then, without looking, what color shirt are you wearing? He embossed an eyebrow l ike he had her there. Lily smiled and for a second he could see that she was just a kid, kind of cute and goofy under the cutthroat makeup and attitude. Black.Lucky guess.You bop I only own black. She grinned. sprightly you didnt ask hair color, I just changed this morning.Thats not good for you, you know. That dyestuff has toxins.Lily lifted the lavender wig to reveal her close-cut maroon locks underneath, then dropped it again. Im all natural. She stood and patted the bar stool. Sit, Asher. Confess. Bore me.Lily leaned back against the counter, and tilted her head to look attentive, but with her dark eye makeup and lavender hair it came off more like a marionette with a broken string. Charlie came around the counter and sat on the stool. I was just in line behind this William Creek guy, and I saw his umbrella glowingAnd Charlie went through the livelong story to her, the umbrella, the bus, the hand from the storm sewer, the bolt for home with the giant dark shadow above the ro oftops, and when he was finished, Lily asked, So how do you know his name?Huh? Charlie said. Of all of the horrible, fantastic things she might have asked about, why that?How do you know the guys name? Lily repeated. You barely spoke to the guy before he firearm it. You see it on his receipt or something?No, I He didnt have any idea how he knew the mans name, but suddenly there was a picture in his head of it written out in big, block letters. He leapt off the stool. I gotta go, Lily.He ran through the door into the stock room and up the steps.I still need a note for school, Lily yelled from below, but Charlie was dashing through the kitchen, past a large Russian woman who was bouncing his baby daughter in her arms, and into the bedroom, where he snatched up the notepad he kept on his nightstand by the phone.There, in his own three-dimensional handwriting, was written the name William Creek and, under it, the number 12. He sat down hard on the bed, holding the notepad like it was a ampoule of explosives.Behind him came the heavy steps of Mrs. Korjev as she followed him into the bedroom. Mr. Asher, what is wrong? You run by like burning bear.And Charlie, because he was a Beta Male, and there had evolved over millions of years a standard Beta response to things inexplicable, said, Someone is fucking with me.Lily was touching up her nail polish with a black whoremonger Marker when Stephan, the situationman, came through the shop door.Sup, Darque? Stephan said, select a stack of mail out of his bag. He was forty, short, muscular, and black. He wore wraparound sunglasses, which were almost always pushed back on his head over hair braided in tight cornrows. Lily had mixed feelings about him. She liked him because he called her Darque, short for Darquewillow Elventhing, the name under which she stock mail at the shop, but because he was cheerful and seemed to like people, she pro provely mistrusted him.Need you to sign, Stephan said, offering her an electronic pad, on which she scribbled Charles Baudelaire with great flourish and without even looking.Stephan plopped the mail on the counter. Working alone again? So where is everyone?Rays in the Philippines, Charlies traumatized. She sighed. Weight of the world falls on me Poor Charlie, Stephan said. They say thats the crush thing you can go through, losing a spouse.Yeah, theres that, too. Today hes traumatized because he saw a guy get hit by a bus up on Columbus.Heard about that. He gonna be alright?Well, fuck no, Stephan, he got hit by a bus. Lily looked up from her nails for the first time.I meant Charlie. Stephan winked, despite her harsh tone.Oh, hes Charlie.Hows the baby?Evidently she leaks noxious substances. Lily waved the dissembling Marker under her nose as if it might mask the look of ripened baby.All good, then, Stephan smiled. Thats it for today. You got anything for me?I took in some red vinyl platforms yesterday. Mens size ten.Stephan collected vintage seventies pimp we ar. Lily was to be on the lookout for anything that came through the shop.How tall?Four inches.Low altitude, Stephan said, as if that explained everything. Take care, Darque.Lily waved her Magic Marker at him as he left, and started sorting through the mail. There were mostly bills, a couple of flyers, but one thick black envelope that felt like a record or catalog. It was addressed to Charlie Asher in care of Ashers Secondhand and had a frank from Nights Plutonian Shore, which evidently was in whatever state started with a U. (Lily found geography not only mind-numbingly boring, but also, in the age of the Internet, irrelevant.)Was it not addressed to the care of Ashers Secondhand? Lily reasoned. And was she, Lily Darquewillow Elventhing, not manning the counter, the sole employee nay the de facto manager, of said secondhand store? And wasnt it her right nay her responsibility to open this envelope and spare Charlie the irritation of the task? Onward, Elventhing Your destiny is set, and if it be not destiny, then surely there is plausible deniability, which in the parlance of politics is the similar thing.She drew a jewel-encrusted dagger from under the counter (the stones valued at over seventy-three cents) and slit the envelope, pulled out the book, and fell in love.The cover was shiny, like a childrens picture book, with a colorful illustration of a grinning skeleton with tiny people impaled on his fingertips, and all of them appeared to be having the time of their lives, as if they were enjoying a carnival ride that just happened to impress having a gaping hole being punched through the chest. It was festive very much of flowers and candy in primary colors, done in the style of Mexican folk art. The Great Big Book of Death, was the title, spelled out across the top of the cover in cheerful, human femur font letters.Lily opened the book to the first page, where a note was paper-clipped.This should explain everything. Im sorry. MFLily removed the note and opened the book to the first chapter So Now Youre Death Heres What Youll Need.And it was all she needed. This was, very possibly, the coolest book she had ever seen. And certainly not anything Charlie would be able to appreciate, especially in his current state of heightened neurosis. She slipped the book into her backpack, then tore the note and the envelope into tiny pieces and buried them at the bottom of the wastebasket.