I began to worry she wasn’t going to show, and then I spotted the white SUV coming up the access road followed closely by a second vehicle, also a white SUV of the same make and model. Both stopped about thirty feet from the bench.
I wiped the sweat off my palms on my jeans. The driver-side door opened and the older woman stepped out, smoothing her long, white coat. The sun was out today, and the temperature was hovering somewhere in the low eighties, hardly coat weather. I couldn’t help but think about the gun, not like the one Dunk’s dad had but something longer, like a rifle or a shotgun, hidden under that coat.
The backdoor of the SUV opened, and I expected Stella to get out, but instead a man with dark brown hair and sunglasses stepped out, also wearing a long white coat. Another man and a woman stepped out on the passenger side. Four more people got out of the second SUV, all adults, no sign of Stella. All of them in long, white coats. The driver of the first SUV, the woman I recognized from my other visits with Stella, approached and took Stella’s seat on the bench.
The static from my Walkman crackled at my ears, and I switched it off, pulling off the headphones. “Where’s Stella?”
The woman smiled. It was cold, the smile of a Cheshire Cat greeting a mouse moments before devouring the little creature, tail and all. She wore a smile of convenience, a mask. I didn’t want to peek behind her mask.
“Stella will not be joining us today.”
“Where is she?”
The woman crossed her legs. She didn’t look at me. She stared straight ahead, her eyes on the SUVs, on the others standing around them. “Ms. Nettleton is somewhere other than here. Where that might be is none of your concern.”
“Is she okay?”
I couldn’t help but think Stella had gotten hurt, been in some kind of terrible accident. Why else wouldn’t she come?
The woman’s long, white hair was pulled back in a ponytail, hanging down over the collar of her coat. Her fingernails were long and manicured, painted a white not unlike her coat. She folded her hands on her lap. “My name is Latrese Oliver. You may call me Ms. Oliver or even Mrs. Oliver. You are never to call me Latrese, and you never will. I am, and always will be, above your station in life. Regardless of whatever minor success you may one day achieve, even if you stumble into a major success at some point in your feeble little life, even if you find riches and stature, you will always be beneath me, inferior to me. Do you understand? Am I making myself clear to you? Nod if you understand.”
I nodded before I even realized I was doing it. I forced the motion to come to a stop, willed my head still.
“Good,” she muttered. “Not that I expect much of you. I think you may have found your peak as a busboy, picking up the filth and waste of others. Wiping the urine stains from the grimy porcelain tiles of the bathroom floor, scraping away the dried shit of strangers from a communal bowl, that is where you truly belong.”
“Where…where is Stella?” I wanted the words to sound forceful, tough even. They didn’t, though. They squeaked from my lips as if from a boy half my age, as if from the boy in the grocery nine months earlier as he wet his pants.
“Do you find her to be pretty? Our little Stella?”
I didn’t say anything. My eyes fell to the stack of comics on the bench.
The woman went on. “You will never have her, you know. As much as you may one day desire her, she will never be yours. Does that bother you?”
“I…I don’t like girls. Not like that.”
“No? Ah, but you will. Someday, I believe, you will. Someday you will want her so desperately you would step in front of a racing car just for the chance to touch her, to feel her warmth near your body, to know her kiss. Our Stella.”
“I just want to talk to her, that’s all.”
Ms. Oliver snorted, lost in her own words. “I bet you go home after these visits and pull your pecker out of your pants and touch yourself in the most obscene of ways just thinking about her—the smell of her hair, that smooth skin of hers. Have you ever even seen a naked girl before? I imagine not. Not at your age. You probably think about it, though, the filthiest of thoughts floating through that head of yours. You’re no better than other boys, all of you are the same. None of you are good enough for our Stella, and it sickens me to think she would even speak to you, let alone…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head. She turned and stared at me, those dark gray eyes boring into me, burning with a hatred so fierce I could taste it on the air. “She will be your everything. Every breath of air you tug from the world will belong to her, everything you do will be for her, and you will mean absolutely nothing to her in return. You will be something she scrapes off her shoe and leaves on the side of the road for the vultures to tear and eat and shit back out. You are, and always shall be, discarded waste—building blocks the universe should have used to make something better, an afterthought.”
She stood then, again smoothing out the long, white coat, and without another word, she climbed back into the SUV followed by the others. I watched as they drove away, the stillness and quiet of the cemetery suffocating.
2
Preacher stepped into the apartment and pressed both hands to the door, closing it with a gentle click. He knew nobody was home, he was certain of that, but he didn’t want to alert the neighbors of his presence any more than he would have wanted to startle the homeowner had they been drowsing in bed or watching television rather than visiting the rotting corpses of two long-lost relatives in the cemetery behind the apartment building.
Neighbors in buildings like this tended to stick together. They got themselves caught up in the business of those living around them just a little too often for Preacher’s taste. He could never live in a place like this, and he didn’t understand why anyone else would make the conscious choice to do so.
The place was a box.
The place was a box stacked on top of other boxes, next to more boxes, and under even more. This wasn’t a home, this was a cell. This was the kind of place society put you.
Josephine Gargery didn’t make a lot of money. He had reviewed her last three tax returns before coming here. As a waitress, she earned $2.01 per hour plus tips, the average tip being 10 to 15 percent. Preacher, of course, tipped 20 percent whether service was good or not and always treated his waitstaff with the utmost respect. Not because he felt they had a hard job or deserved more than the norm from him because he could sometimes be difficult, but because they handled his food and often did so outside his viewing area. He would never consider treating someone poorly, then sending them back to the kitchen to fetch his meal. They might spit in it, or worse. He once heard of a cook running a chicken sandwich through the dishwater when he heard the recipient was a former high school teacher who gave him a C minus in history class three years earlier. Imagine what that same person might do if he or she had a sudden dislike for a regular patron simply because that patron was rude or tipped poorly on a previous visit?
Preacher always tipped 20 percent, and he had done so when he ate breakfast at Krendal’s Diner this morning. Based on the income stated on Josephine Gargery’s tax returns, her regular patrons did not. She earned $7,840 last year. That amounted to $150.77 per week—only a few dollars above the national poverty level of $7,240 per year. Considering she had the boy, a dependent, Ms. Gargery wasn’t doing well. This became abundantly clear as Preacher turned and surveyed the apartment.
The small space reeked of cigarette smoke, even with the two living room windows open and a light breeze lofting in. Smoky grime stained the walls. He could only imagine how the filth of it infiltrated the furniture, the bedsheets, the clothing. He wore thick leather gloves. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, touch anything with bare hands.
