© 2011 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
3
THE RAILWAY TIES flashed past.
The buildings of the big city streamed past. She glimpsed her own face pressed against the window of the car.
The railway ties slowed and stopped. The door opened and she stepped down on the platform. She carried the battered valise that she’d had forever, since she was a little kid. She was wearing her beat up western boots and worn blue jeans. The boots knocked on the platform as she crossed.
She halted in the middle of the platform and looked around.
Many people streamed across the station. But nobody came to meet her and there was nobody she knew or even recognized.
She stuffed her return ticket back in her pocket and went on.
Through a taxi window the buildings marched by overhead.
Inside the cab, she looked down to the paper in her hand.
The letter read:
Dear Amber,
Come and visit me.
Can you get away?
Please come. Please come now.
Love, Aunt Amber.
The voice of the cab driver intruded. He spoke in a foreign accent, hard to understand, not like home at all. ‘Here is it,’ was all she could get out of it.
She looked up.
The apartment building was large, four stories tall, but nothing distinguished it. It was a perfectly ordinary, anonymous apartment building in an anonymous, unknown city. Its windows and balconies were empty. On the street below it, she carried her valise away from the departing cab.
At the outer door of the apartment building there was a system to dial up to the apartments. She put down the valise, folded the letter, and dialed a number. The speaker buzzed.
A man’s voice squawked from the speaker. ‘Yeah?’
She said, ‘Uh – I must have the wrong number. I’m sorry.’
She dialed again. The speaker buzzed.
The same man’s voice answered. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is Amber there? I’m looking for Amber.’
The man’s voice said, ‘Come up. This is the place.’
The door buzzed. She stared at it. Then she grabbed the valise and went in.
The light in the elevator showed the numbers: it flashed from “3” to “4.”
The elevator door opened and she stepped out, valise in one hand, her jacket draped over her other arm. She moved down the hallway, slowly, and came to a stop before a door with the number, 406. She knocked.
The door opened and a man stepped onto the threshold. He was middle aged, paunchy, balding and dressed in a cheap suit.
‘Who’re you?’ he asked.
‘Is Amber in? I want to talk to Amber.’
The man grinned. ‘Too late.’
He handed her a card. The card read:
B.J. Dimes
County Sheriff’s Office
She looked at the card. None of this was making sense. ‘What is it? Where’s Amber?’
He was still grinning when he said, ‘Amber’s dead, sweetheart.’
It was like he had punched her in the stomach and all the wind was knocked out of her. Maybe he was a police officer but he acted like any traveling salesman. ‘Thanks,’ she said.
Dimes chuckled. Hard.
‘Now let’s get back to Question One. Who’re you?’
‘I’m here to see my aunt. I mean – Amber was my aunt.’
‘You got ID?’
She took her driver’s license out of her purse and handed it to him. He looked at it then at her.
‘What is this, some kind of joke?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Says here, “Amber Wertham.” Dead girl’s name was Amber Wertham.’
‘I told you. Amber was my aunt. She’s Big Amber, I’m Little Amber.’
He copied down her name and address and identity number in a little notebook. He opened the door wider and said, ‘Come on in.’
The apartment had a few pieces of furniture and things but the overall impression was spareness, even emptiness. The wallpaper had faded flowers and bees on it. It looked like an apartment in a movie from the 1940s; it looked like it should have been in black and white. She had never come here before. Amber visited home a few times since she came out here to the big city but nobody from back home had ever seen how she lived here and she had never even sent them any photographs.
A couple other detectives, even seedier than Dimes, were going through things. Dimes led her around.
He said, ‘I always give folks the news hard like that. I like to see how they take it.’
‘How did I take it?’
‘Like you didn’t know it was coming.’
In the corner of the living room stood a drafting table. One of the detectives was flipping through ink drawings.
Dimes asked, ‘What did she do for a living?’
‘She wrote and drew children’s books. Here, these are hers.’
He read the titles. ‘Ant City. Antland. Antworld. Jesus, what’s next?’
‘She said she was working on something different. It was a secret. All she told me was the title would be, Gods of the Ants. Those must be drawings from it.’
The detective with the drawings held them up to Dimes and said, ‘Pretty creepy, Blow Job.’
Dimes led her through the kitchen. He opened the cabinets and something crawled out and he smacked it hard with his hand.
‘Bugs,’ he said. ‘You mind telling me why you picked this time to pay your aunt a visit?’
She handed him the note. He glanced it over. From the other room one of the detectives called out.
‘Hey Blow Job, her TV doesn’t work!’
Dimes said, ‘She give you any reason why she was in such a hurry to have to come calling?’
She shook her head.
He said, ‘Ever come calling before?’
‘No. It’s the first time I came here.’
‘Um. Mind if I hang onto this?’
He pocketed the note and led her into the bedroom. Dresses were piled on the bed. The other detective was going through the drawers of the dresser, tossing underthings onto the bed on top of the dresses.
‘Your aunt didn’t seem to have any relatives in town. That right?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
‘Any boyfriends?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Any – girlfriends?’
‘No.’
He looked over at the dresses piling up on the bed. He let one dangle off his fingers. ‘This doesn’t look like what I picture a kid’s book writer would wear,’ he said. ‘What do you know of your aunt’s private life?’
‘She was my aunt.’
He grinned again. It struck her more like a leer. ‘You don’t know much, do you?’
‘Look, Detective. I just got here. It was a long train ride. But I’ve got a return ticket and I’ll go right back to the farm unless you find yourself some horse-manners.’
Dimes looked her up and down. She looked him up and down right back. She reckoned she had the line on him. He called himself a detective from the county sheriff's office but he wasn’t any better than a tractor parts salesman down on his luck. He was in the middle of a trip to retirement and as high up in his job as he was likely to get. If he’d been a little more tactful and a whole lot dumber he might have made Captain but he wasn’t and he probably knew it. He didn’t believe in anything and he wasn’t afraid of anything. He had a fat, greasy face and sharp eyes that looked you straight through and didn’t miss a trick. He only had one weakness, women never went for him and that was still, even at his age, a sore spot.
He was the one to back down. ‘Sorry. Come here.’
The other detective said, ‘Hey Blow Job—’
‘Pipe down.’ Dimes took her arm and said in a voice that was almost courteous, ‘Come on.’
He took her out onto the balcony and closed the sliding glass door behind them. There was a breeze and sunshine and the sounds of the city welling up. She leaned on the railing, looking down. She could see, between two buildings, the blue of the ocean. It should have looked pretty. But everything in the city only struck her as sad and it all made her so tired.
Dimes said, ‘You liked her, didn’t you?’
‘She was my aunt. She was my Aunt Amber.’
She closed her eyes but she didn’t cry. She wanted to but somehow she couldn’t get the tears to come. Maybe it was his fault, his being there. Dimes waited. She opened her eyes after a while. She stared down at the street.
Below, the cars moved along the streets, small and far.
She said, ‘I like watching traffic. All the cars and people moving. They know what they want. They know where they’re going.’
He said, ‘They’re all going the same place. We’re going to have to ask you to come downtown. To make a positive identification.’
She pulled herself together and looked Dimes square-on.
‘I’m ready,’ she said. She didn’t feel it.
§
THE CORRIDOR was cold and clean and dead. The fluorescent lights moved by overhead and she could hear the cold sharp echoes of their steps.
She walked down the corridor at Dimes’ side. She didn’t look at anything in particular. She felt kind of numb. She noticed she was holding in her stomach and made herself breathe more normally.
The doors opened and they entered. In the back of the room a gangly young man with red hair in a white lab coat came towards them. The morgue attendant grinned and it was ugly. His teeth were bad and his eyes leered.
Dimes huddled with the morgue attendant. She stood apart. She looked around the room.
The morgue was on the 10th floor but felt like it was in the cellar. The small doors in the wall repeated one another. Each had a handle and a small tag with a number in it. The attendant took hold of one handle and pulled. The number was 678 235. She didn’t know why that seemed important.
The compartment slid out. Something was on it, black and shiny, a plastic bag with a horrible familiarity. She moved up behind it, staring down.
The attendant leaned over and unzipped the bag part way.
The bag opened, showing a face and neck and part of one shoulder, cold and naked.
She had to turn away. The face was her aunt’s but not her aunt’s. It looked just like Big Amber, only it was stiff and still and there wasn’t any life in it and somehow that made a big difference.
She saw Dimes staring at her and nodded her head. The morgue attendant leered at her, the creep.
‘That her?’ Dimes said. ‘For the record.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘You look a lot alike.’
‘Everybody said that.’
‘Okay, that’s enough.’
The attendant zipped up the bag and wrote something in a file folder.
She started to cry.
‘We can go now,’ Dimes said.
‘Why does she look that way?’
‘Everybody looks that way.’
The morgue attendant read from the file. ‘Multiple contusions, bruises, broken bones. Otherwise, Caucasian female, late 20’s, brown hair, blue eyes, 5’8”, only one identifying mark – small tattoo, inside left wrist. Oh, yes,’ he added. She could hear the leer in his voice. ‘She was raped, too. Report says so. By, uh, more than one fella.’
‘That’s enough,’ Dimes said.
Raped? No. But she only said something stupid. ‘Aunt Amber didn’t have a tattoo.’
Dimes said, ‘Is that your aunt or not?’
‘It’s her. But she never had a tattoo.’
‘Maybe she got it since the last time you saw her.’
‘No. She’d never do that. We talked about it once.’
The morgue attendant read, ‘ “One identifying mark – small tattoo, inside left wrist. Black. Design of a spider or a beetle.” Here – I’ll show you.’
Before she could say anything to stop him he unzipped the bag half way down. The grayish nude torso of Aunt Amber looked ugly and sick in the fluorescent light. The morgue attendant pulled out the left hand and showed her.
On the smooth inner wrist was etched in black ink a small round design. It looked like a beetle.
The morgue attendant leered at her. He was horrible. She wanted to slap him and scratch his eyes out. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he zipped up the bag. He did it like it was some kind of performance.
Dimes said, ‘You got my card?
She fished it out. Dimes wrote another number on it.
‘Call day or night. If I’m not in, I’ll call you back. Okay?’
‘I want to know,’ she said. ‘How she died.’
‘Jesus sweetheart, haven’t you had enough?’ Dimes handed her a bag. On the bag in black were the numbers: 678 235.
‘Here’s her things. What she had with her. You have to sign for them. Then go back to the apartment. Boys should be done with it now.’
The morgue attendant slid the compartment shut again. 678 235.
She watched the black plastic bag disappear.
The little door shut and the morgue attendant looked up at her and licked his lips and leered.
§
THE ROOMS of the apartment opened onto one another. A few lamps sat on the floor in the corners of rooms, spilling light up the walls. She walked about, slowly, looking at things. She picked up some of the mess the police officers had made. She didn’t really know what she was doing, it was more automatic or like sleepwalking.
When she got back to the apartment, using Aunt Amber’s keys, she lay down for a little on the faded brown sofa; she fell asleep right away and woke up in the dark with the taste of the old sofa mixed with her drool and her neck and shoulder aching from the funny way she’d been lying. She got up and for a minute wondered where she was.
In the bedroom she put away the underthings. She hung up the dresses. None of the dresses looked like anything she’d ever seen Aunt Amber wearing. They didn’t look like anything she could even imagine Aunt Amber would wear. They were all somehow … indecent. It wasn’t just that they showed a lot of skin, though most of them did – it was more in the designs themselves, the combination of materials and cut. They weren’t nice at all. And they all had the same tag in them, from the brand or the store or the designer, she couldn’t tell which. A small label with hot pink letters on black: dallio’s. She held up a black dress. She looked at herself in the mirror with it.
A knock sounded at the door. She folded the black dress over her arm and walked to the door.
She opened the door as far as the chain went.
Through the gap in the door she could see a pear-shaped man with a mustache in an expensive suit. He looked like a buyer for the downtown department store.
The buyer said, ‘Hello.’
‘…Yes?’
‘You look different tonight,’ he said. ‘Still very nice, though.’
‘Can I help you?’
‘Look – Uh – it’s awkward, can I come in?’
‘Not before you tell me who you are and what you want.’
‘You – you really don’t remember me, do you?’
She realized he must take her for her Aunt Amber. ‘I never saw you before in my life. And I don’t think I ever want to again, thanks all the same.’
‘Look, you—’
‘Good-bye.’
She started to close the door.
‘Are you sure? Are you sure you don’t remember? Wait!’
He jammed something in the door, blocking it. He thrust it on through so she had to take it.
‘What you took the fitting for. Latest model.’
She closed the door. She noticed she was shaking. She flung the garment bag down on the floor and went to the phone. In her hand was Dimes’ card.
But she hesitated. She put the phone back down and the card down next to it on the stand.
She went back into the bedroom. She tossed the black dress on the bed.
She started to unbutton her blouse.
§
DOWNSTAIRS, the buyer walked out of the lobby. He stopped on the sidewalk and looked back up at the building. He looked like he was trying to figure something out. Then he stooped, pulled something from his pocket and made a mark on the sidewalk.
He glanced up at the building. Then he got into his car and started the motor. On the sidewalk the mark he made was round in black lines. It looked like a beetle.
Then the tires spat gravel and trash and the car pulled away and the mark was left in darkness.
§
SHE PUT things away in the kitchen. She was wearing the black dress now. It left her shoulders bare. The material was expensive. She’d never worn a dress like this. It left her skin looking pale and unmarked.
She moved into the living room. She turned the television on. It didn’t come on.
On the wall behind the television a mirror was hanging and on top of the television was a glass ant farm. Amber picked up the ant farm and looked at it.
The tunnels were etched in dirt behind the glass. The ants crawled up and down the tunnels.
She sat in front of the television and watched the ant farm.
After a while she fell asleep.
