Free Fall

  29

  I HEAD BACK TO MY APARTMENT TO GRAB SOME CLOTHES AND toiletries for my temporary move to Ceepak’s place.

  I also want to check up on Christine. See how she’s doing. Keep an eye on that short fuse of hers. Wouldn’t want my apartment to blow up while’s she’s using it. I’d never get back my damage deposit.

  The Sea Village Apartment Complex sits halfway between what you might call “downtown” Sea Haven and the southern tip of the island where the rich folks like Shona Oppenheimer live.

  I park my Jeep and head to Room 111. I fish in my cargo shorts for the keys before remembering, duh, I gave them to Christine.

  So I knock on the door.

  “Danny?”

  Christine’s voice would probably be muffled more if my front door weren’t the cheapest kind they sell at Home Depot.

  “Yeah.”

  “Just a second.”

  I hear a chain slide. Knobs turn.

  She’s using locks I forgot I even had.

  “Hey!” she says when the door swings open.

  Her curly hair is damp. Her face is scrubbed clean. She’s dressed in a cute, chocolate colored blouse and is working one of my threadbare towels into her left ear. I hope the towel was actually clean and didn’t just pass my early morning sniff test.

  “Come on in,” Christine says, her voice cheery and a little nervous. Yes, this is weird. We haven’t even been on a date but it’s like we’re doing the whole “Honey, I’m home” bit from some ancient sitcom.

  “I just need to grab a few things,” I say.

  “Sure. Make yourself at home.”

  I glance around the room. I love what Christine has done with the place.

  Well, mostly, she’s lit a fancy vanilla-scented candle to cover up the smell of my gym clothes (I really should wash that stuff more often). She’s also draped a couple colorful scarves over the window and put some flowers in an empty pickle jar on my kitchenette table. Looks nice.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she says. “I added a few girly-girl touches.”

  “No problem. Just need to grab some clothes and my shaving stuff.”

  “Sure.” She moves left. I go right. The room is so tiny we have to dance around each other to maneuver.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Danny.”

  “No worries.”

  I sidle past her. Open some drawers. Try to ignore the bras and Victoria Secret type items lying dangerously close to my boxer shorts.

  Christine watches me pack. Smiles.

  “I can see why Katie was so crazy about you.”

  Lump in throat time again. “She was?”

  “Totally. ‘Danny, Danny, Danny.’ It’s all she ever talked about.”

  “Really?”

  “Cross my heart.” When she says that, she makes the accompanying gesture. Across her chest. What I’m saying is Christine is, basically, pointing at her boobs. Not that she had to. I was already there.

  “So, you hungry?” I ask.

  “Starving.”

  “You want to go grab a bite?”

  She hesitates. “I should probably eat in for a while. I’m a gal on a budget, Danny. My savings can’t last forever and I’ve lost two jobs this month …”

  “My treat.”

  “No. You’ve done enough.”

  “Come on. Nothing fancy. The Dinky Dinghy.”

  “The shrimp place?”

  “I’m a regular.”

  Christine goes to my desk, flips through the glossy pages of a “See Sea Haven” tourist magazine she must’ve picked up when she stopped off to buy toilet paper.

  “They might have a coupon in here. Everybody else does. Score! Twenty percent off!”

  30

  THE DINKY DINGHY ADVERTISES ITSELF AS “FINE DINING WITHOUT the atmosphere.”

  It’s basically a squat, flat-roof building that could double as a dry cleaner’s. Bright, shrimp-pink poles hold up signs advertising clams, shrimp, lobster, and chowda. It’s mostly a fresh fish market that does a brisk takeout business but has five or six picnic tables out front in the gravel lawn for people like Christine and me.

  We take a table two away from one occupied by a tourist family on their first day of vacation (you can tell by the farmer tan lines and SHNJ tee-shirts). They’re happily digging into a seafood feast, what the Dinky Dinghy calls “The Works”: fried shrimp, fried scallops, crab cakes (sort of fried), fried flounder filets, fried clam strips, a bucket of fries, and a quart of coleslaw. I don’t think the coleslaw is fried but I bet they’re working on that.

  “This looks amazing,” Christine says, sitting down with her blackened salmon sandwich, garden salad, and bottle of Vitamin Water Zero. I went with the “Scrumptious Scampi.” Lots of garlic. If I know my breath stinks, I won’t be so tempted to kiss Christine when our non-date dinner date is done. I’m drinking a Stewart’s Orange ’N Cream. We came in my car. I am the designated driver.

  “You want a beer or some wine with dinner?” I ask.

  Neptune’s Nog, a package store, is right across the street, on the other side of Ocean Avenue.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Thank you. Some of the meds I take … well, it’s best if I don’t drink.”

  “Cool,” I say, even though I probably should’ve thought of something better.

  Christine pushes her tray a few inches away. Gets this serious look on her face.

  “It was right after Katie died,” she says. “My whole life went into a kind of free fall.”

  “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “I do, Danny. You and Ceepak and Ceepak’s mom have done so much for me. Besides, talking is good.”

  “Okay.”

  “It started right after Katie died. I just couldn’t do my job any more. Every time the ER doors swung open, I saw Katie, covered with blood, lying on the gurney. It could be a guy who’d been in a motorcycle wreck, but I’d see Katie. I started making mistakes. Little things. But even little mistakes can kill someone who’s already in a trauma situation.”

  “So you quit?”

  Christine nods. “They called it a long-term leave of absence. Set me up with a program. The hospital was very helpful.”

  “Because you’re a very good nurse. They don’t want to lose you.”

  That earns a small smile. “Well, you’re very sweet to say so.” She shakes her head. “I thought PTSD was just something soldiers earned in war zones. I didn’t think it could happen to me. But I had never had someone that close to me die before.”

  I wish I could say the same.

  “So how’s it going?” I ask. “Now?”

  “Better. I feel like I could, maybe, go back to the hospital. Maybe not the trauma unit, right away …”

  “That’s a good idea. Maybe you could work someplace, I don’t know, happier. Maybe the maternity ward.”

  Christine laughs. “Screaming babies? Anxious new mothers? Nothing stressful about that …”

  I’m laughing now, too. “Guess you’re right. Anyway, I think it’s great that you still want to be a nurse. Someday. Somewhere.”

  “I don’t know what else I’d do, Danny. My mom always said I was born to be a nurse.”

  Funny. Mine always says I was born to be a pain in her patootie.

  “And Shona Oppenheimer knew all about this … situation?”

  “It was supposed to be kept super-confidential.”

  “But somebody told Shona.”

  “One of her plastic surgeons. The lady who gives her the Botox shots.” Christine taps her forehead. “Dr. McWrinkles works at the hospital sometimes, too. I guess she knew somebody who knew somebody who was in the mood to gossip …”

  “Ohmigod,” I hear a woman shout.

  “He should’ve chewed it more!” growls a man.

  I whip around. It’s the family. The mom and dad are up off their picnic benches, hovering behind a kid, maybe ten, who keeps coughin
g.

  “He’s choking!” screams the mom.

  “I’m okay, mom,” gasps the boy. “It’s just stuck.”

  Christine is up and over to their picnic table two seconds before I am.

  “Can you breathe?” she asks the boy.

  He nods.

  “I’m a nurse,” she says, calmly taking the little boy’s wrist in her hand.

  “I’m a cop,” I add. “I’ll call nine-one-one.”

  “Hang on, Danny,” says Christine. She looks at her watch, checks the boy’s pulse. “His vitals are good.”

  A waitress—a pal of mine named Ansley Parker—comes running out of the seafood shop.

  “Do we need to do the Heimlich, Danny?” she asks.

  Guess Ansley’s been studying that poster every restaurant has hanging on a wall for so long, she’s ready to jump into action and pump the kid’s abdomen with her fist.

  “Hold up,” I say.

  “Does it feel like it’s stuck?” Christine asks the boy.

  “Yes,” the boy answers, proving that his airway is clear. He taps his sternum. “Right here. I can’t cough it up.”

  “Danny?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Pour some water on my hand, please.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  I grab a bottle of Poland Spring someone at the table had been drinking. Do as I was told.

  “Okay, hon,” Christine says to the kid, “we need to upchuck that chunk of food. You willing to give it a shot?”

  The kid smiles.

  “You’ve thrown up before?”

  “When I had the stomach flu,” he says, his voice a little hoarse. “Yeah.”

  “Good. This will be just like that.” Christine looks to the parents.

  “What are you going to do?” asks the mom.

  “Stimulate his gag reflex.”

  The dad raises his eyebrows and makes the classic “gag me now” gesture: two fingers to his open mouth with the tongue lolling out.

  “Right,” says Christine.

  “Okay,” says the mom.

  Christine turns to the boy. “You ready to do this thing, buddy?”

  The kid nods.

  Christine places her (sort of) clean fingers into the boy’s mouth.

  He gags.

  Up comes an explosion of brown, chunky mush.

  And one white hunk of scallop.

  Christine’s cute chocolate brown top? It is now slimed with dribbling tan slop.

  “Thank you!” gushes the boy, breathing deep just to prove that he can do it without coughing.

  “Thank goodness you were here,” says the mom.

  “You’re lucky to have her as a girlfriend,” the dad says to me, shaking my hand, like I did something to be congratulated for.

  I think all three of them want to hug Christine.

  But they hesitate.

  No sense in everybody’s top getting ruined by all that regurgitated chum.

  31

  WE TAKE TURNS SHUFFLING IN AND OUT OF MY APARTMENT to gather up our dirty clothes and head to the nearest 24-hour laundromat.

  Christine, of course, needs to peel off her soaked blouse and change into something clean.

  I wait in the parking lot until she comes out of unit 111 in a new outfit, toting a canvas sack like Mrs. Claus. Then I dash in to grab my stinky gym clothes, socks, and whatever else is tossed in the corner of the closet or tucked under the bed. I stuff it all into a brown grocery sack because I’m all about re-using and re-cycling.

  Once again, we take my car. I’m a little worried about how Christine is going to scrape up gas money without a job.

  It’s dark out. Moths are dive-bombing into the halogen streetlamps up and down the avenue. Christine is wearing what I think they still call a halter top. As in, “Halt! Don’t go there, Danny.”

  If you were familiar with my romantic history, you’d know I don’t have the best long-term luck with the ladies. My girlfriends either end up as sniper targets or turn into psycho-freak bunny-boilers. It’s never a simple boy-meets-girl-and-they-hop-into-a-fast-car Springsteen song for me.

  During the spin cycle, Christine tells me how scary things were at the late Arnold Rosen’s house this morning, right before Ceepak and I showed up.

  “That Judith told me to get out of the house or she’d finish what her sister started.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Christine shakes her curly head. “I know she comes off all sweet and nicey-nice but trust me, Danny, she can be a real witch.”

  “Good to know,” I say, even though I’m not sure Christine is what they call a reliable source. I’m guessing that, whenever she sees Judith Rosen, she also sees Shona Oppenheimer. Coming at her, arms outstretched like a zombie, hands ready to crush her windpipe.

  And of course, Judith keeps insisting that Christine is the evil one.

  After we transfer our sopping wet clothes to the dryers, Christine tells me more.

  “We were friendly at first,” she says. “Shona and me. So, when I lost my day job with Mrs. Crabtree, Shona suggested I take the job at her sister’s father-in-law’s house.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Crabtree?”

  “Mauna Faye Crabtree. Sweet little old lady. Eighty-eight years old. I was with her for three months before she passed away.”

  I nod. I figure burying your clients is just part of the whole home health aide deal.

  “I was so grateful to have more work,” Christine continues. “I really didn’t have any kind of problem when they asked me to keep an eye on Dr. Rosen’s medical condition. I thought Judith and David were just looking out for a stubborn old man who wouldn’t reveal anything about his health conditions to his family. But then, they started asking me to do weird stuff.”

  “Like what.”

  “Find his will. Keep tabs on anything Michael Rosen said or wrote to his dad. Smuggle out medical records.”

  “Did you do any of this stuff?”

  Thankfully, Christine shakes her head.

  “No. Dr. Rosen was my patient, not Judith or David. My loyalty was to him, not them.”

  “Which isn’t what David and Judith wanted to hear?”

  “Not at all. So Judith nagged her sister. Told Shona to get on my case. Push me harder. Search my shoulder bag.”

  “Which takes us to the night I caught the nine-one-one call.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what do you think David and Judith were really after?”

  Christine shrugs.

  “Do you think Harvey Nussbaum was right?” I say. “Did they want Dr. Rosen’s beach house?”

  Another shrug. “Only one thing I know for sure about the Rosen family. Little Arnie was Dr. Rosen’s favorite. He called his grandson his ‘living legacy’—the heir to the ‘Rosen bloodline.’ He even hoped Little Arnie would grow up and become a dentist and restore ‘our family’s good name at U Penn.’”

  “He certainly has the smile for it,” I say, remembering all those photographs hanging on the walls of Dr. Rosen’s home.

  “No doubt about it. He’s a good-looking kid. Nice face.”

  Christine doesn’t add any commentary.

  Like how Little Arnie is lucky he didn’t end up with his father’s face, which sort of resembles the bongo-thumping chimpanzee with the beatnik beard from one of those monkey-of-the-month calendars.

  “I guess now that Dr. Rosen is dead,” says Christine, “the two brothers will split everything. David will get his half of the house, Michael his.”

  When our clothes come out of the dryers, Christine goes to this tall, flat table in the back of the laundromat and starts folding her things, even her undergarments. For me, this is a novel concept. Usually, I just stuff everything back into the brown paper bag I brought it in and go with the rumpled look.

  Tonight, however, I pretend like I always fold my clothes and match up my socks. After watching Christine in action for a minute or two, I even figure out how to do it. Sort of.

  And t
hen I drive Christine home to my place, which is now, temporarily, her place.

  “You want to come in?” she asks.

  That vanilla scent from those candles in my apartment? It’s on her skin and in her hair, too. Her chocolate brown eyes are wide and eager. I can feel heat radiating off her body. As the windows start fogging up, I feel like I’m sitting in a cozy sauna with a warm batch of Nestle Toll House cookies.

  “Ceepak’s probably waiting up for me,” I say. My voice cracks the way it did back in sixth grade on the word “me.”

  “Well, maybe one day, Danny Boyle, you’ll let me show you how much I appreciate all that you’ve done for me.”

  “Okay,” I say, making sure it comes out deep and low. “Some day.”

  “Promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Christine leans in and kisses me. On the cheek. The move jostles everything her halter-top was supposed to be halting.

  But somehow, I keep my hands firmly gripped on the steering wheel.

  32

  I NEED A BEER.

  I’m not sure Ceepak has any in his fridge. At least not the real stuff. Ever since his time in Iraq, he’s big on Near Beer—stuff like O’Doul’s and Coors Non-Alcoholic.

  So I pull into the parking lot for Neptune’s Nog Discount Liquor Outlet.

  It’s another flat-roofed building the size of a small supermarket with every kind of beer neon glowing in its front wall of windows. Bud. Miller. Corona. Sam Adams. Blue Moon.

  Inside the store you’ll find aisles lined with shelves crowded by battalions of wine and liquor bottles, not to mention rack after rack of salty snacks. You’ll also see towering stacks of beer packaged in what they call suitcases—24-can cartons with a handy handle for toting down to the beach or up to your motel room.

  I pull into the parking lot next to a dinged-up Ford F-150 pickup and douse the headlights so the moths will leave my Jeep alone and go attack the fluorescent tube lights giving the package store its ghoulish green glow.

  The instant I climb out of my Jeep, I see Ben Sinclair and a few of his young suburban gangsta buddies leaning against the booze mart’s grocery cart return corral.

  They have their hands stuffed into the front of their hoodies or the pockets of jeans hanging halfway down their butt so they can show off their plaid Ralph Lauren boxer shorts.