Fishbowl: A Novel Page 3

  Jimenez reaches the landing, pushes the door, and steps through into the lobby. He stops and looks across the expanse of space to his adversaries, the elevators. One stopped working months ago and has been sitting with an “Out of Order” sign ever since. The other stopped working sometime this morning. It returned itself, empty, to the lobby level, and from then on it has sat there, unmoving. It still opens with a cheerful bing when people press the button. The doors slide closed after they board, but when they press the button for their floor, it sits motionless. Luckily, the door still opens to release them again.

  Jimenez grew tired of the calls coming in from the residents and wrote a note in felt marker on one of his service request forms and taped it to the door. The note reads, “It don’t work. Fixed soon. Use the stairs.”

  After taping up his note, Jimenez called the building manager.

  “Marty, it’s Jimenez. The other elevator’s broke now too.”

  “Fix it,” Marty said. It sounded like he was eating potato chips.

  Jimenez thought for a moment. He knew very little about how elevators worked. “What if I can’t?”

  “Then I’ll call someone who knows how. You give it a shot though,” Marty said. “Technicians, man, those guys are expensive to hire out. Call me back. Let me know how it goes.”

  About half an hour ago, Jimenez was procrastinating by watering the plants in the lobby. He watched that homeschooled kid from the fifteenth floor cross the lobby from the stairwell. To Jimenez, the kid seemed nice enough, never caused any trouble, never vandalized the stairwell or threw stuff off the balcony. But there was something different about him, something missing.

  As Jimenez watered the plants, the homeschooled kid shuffled across the lobby from the stairwell door and pressed the elevator button. The door binged and slid open. The kid shuffled inside. The door slid closed. Jimenez watered a few more plants and then grew curious about what the boy was doing in the unmoving elevator. He put down the canister and waited. Eventually the door slid open and the kid came out, looked around, and asked, “Excuse me, this isn’t my floor. Where’s my place?”

  “Use the stairs, kid. Elevator’s broke.”

  Jimenez has been putting off fixing the elevator all day. The stack of service requests dwindled by the hour as Jimenez worked his way through them. The lint trap in the Coin-O-Matic dryer isn’t stuck anymore. The fire door to the stairwell on the seventeenth floor is no longer jammed. The pee smell on P1 has been dealt with and on and on until there were but the two request forms left. He has postponed this moment the best he could, but now it is time.

  The door to the stairwell lets out a hiss as the hydraulic arm eases the door shut behind him. The latch clicks as Jimenez takes his first slow steps across the lobby, contemplating the elevator while he approaches. The tile floor glistens, and the blower unit circulates fresh air through the vents. Outside, through the security door, the traffic noise is hushed. Jimenez’s hammer swings on a loop in his tool belt, thumping its dead weight against his thigh.

  What tools does someone need to fix an elevator? Jimenez ponders and hikes his weighty belt back up onto his hips.

  What’s even wrong with it? Jimenez wonders as he presses the elevator button.

  The doors slide open with a whisper, revealing the elevator’s mirrored compartment. Jimenez glances at his reflection. Behind him, at the lobby door, he spots the big guy who lives up on the twenty-fifth floor. He wears a hard hat and carries a big black shopping bag. Jimenez pauses to nod an acknowledgment at the reflection of the man. The man nods back.

  How hard can fixing an elevator be? Jimenez thinks as he steps into the compartment and starts to unscrew the brass screws on the panel.

  The doors slide closed.

  Jimenez leans the cover against the wall and then pokes around in the panel randomly, looking for some clue as to how the contraption works or what’s wrong with it.

  What can possibly go wrong? he thinks. It already isn’t working, so it can’t get any worse, right?

  6

  In Which Petunia Delilah Feels a Peculiar Twinge in Her Nethers

  With three weeks remaining until her due date, Dr. Ross instructed Petunia Delilah to avoid strenuous activity and anything else that might raise her blood pressure or agitate her. He said she’s suffering from hyper-what’s-it and should not take unnecessary risks with her health or the health of her baby. She couldn’t salt her food, and Dr. Ross established a diet for her that is composed of equal parts of bland and boring. He gave her two lists of food, one on a green page and one on a red page. While his lips were moving, Petunia Delilah scanned the red page of forbidden foods and could only think how badly she wanted a fucking ice cream sandwich. And there it was on Dr. Ross’s red page. Surprisingly, they are quite high in sodium.

  Petunia Delilah has been horizontal all over the apartment. She lies on her back on the floor whenever the tingling numbness sparkles down her left leg. It’s some pinched nerve, and she curses it. She lies on the couch, shifting as frequently as she flips channels in search of some fabled “good” daytime television show. She lies on the recliner out on the balcony, usually in midafternoon, when the sun is hot and before the rush hour traffic builds and too much noise percolates up the side of the building for her to enjoy the air anymore. She doesn’t lie there often now though because it’s difficult to get back on her feet without something to pull herself up on.

  Right now, she lies in bed, propped up by a mountain of pillows and reading a dog-eared paperback. It’s an old science fiction story in which the impeccably mannered heroes speak in complete sentences without contractions. Petunia Delilah likes to rub the brittle paper between her thumb and forefinger when she turns the pages. She likes the smell of old glue and yellowed paper because it’s like touching the past.

  Petunia Delilah stops reading and looks questioningly at the ceiling because she feels a peculiar twinge in her nethers. She knows they’re down there, her nethers, somewhere where her legs meet her torso. They’re there even though she hasn’t seen them in a month unless aided by a mirror, her belly having grown too swollen and unwieldy for her to see them on her own.

  And there it is again, the peculiar twinge. She cocks her head to one side and lowers the book to rest on her stomach.

  She scootches to the edge of the bed and swings her legs to the floor. With a grunting effort she gets up and waddles from the bedroom to the bathroom, legs spindly and knees splayed like those of a cricket.

  Dr. Ross prescribed bed rest after she passed out at her desk at work. She hadn’t been doing anything strenuous, just the usual intake documents and registry, and the next thing she remembers is being in the hospital. The gap in consciousness between the two was a clumsy jump cut, not so much disturbing as it was awkward.

  Apparently, the funeral home where she worked was abuzz with the news of her collapse. Of course, the first assumption about a nonresponsive body in a funeral home is that it has suffered death. In Petunia Delilah’s case, an elderly couple attending the service of one of their recently departed friends knew better through their own hardened experiences with the reaper. They called the ambulance and stayed with her until the paramedics arrived.

  The elderly couple, with no pressing engagements after the funeral service, even visited her in the hospital. They brought her flowers and chatted with her for an hour, their manners as impeccable as any hero’s in an old science fiction book.

  The funeral home director visited shortly after her collapse as well. He told her quite sternly and concernedly in his characteristic, mockable monotone, “You are on leave, Petunia Delilah. For your own good. Have a happy baby, and we will talk soon.”

  And so began the incarceration in her one-bedroom apartment.

  Petunia Delilah turns sideways in the small bathroom. She unbuttons her nightie to her midsection and looks at the profile of her undercarriage in the medicine cabinet mirror. The skin is stretched and bulbous with some discoloration, nothing
untoward; nothing has visibly changed with those peculiar twinges. She smiles, rubs a hand over her belly, and then buttons her nightie up again.

  Danny, her boyfriend, affectionately refers to her belly as her fuck bubble.

  She has looked at herself this way several times today, the peculiar twinges from her nethers sparking her hope of labor, a hope for the end of her discomfort and the even less bearable boredom.

  The twinges have been happening since early morning. They woke her up, and she roused Danny in hopes that it was the start of her labor. They lay side by side, in the early-morning quiet, the city breathing softly outside the bedroom window, holding hands in quiet anticipation of the day to come.

  But nothing happened.

  Danny went to work, and Petunia Delilah read a book.

  Petunia Delilah doesn’t fear giving birth or the baby. Her midwife told her a truth: women have been giving birth for hundreds of thousands of years without modern medicine. It happens. If anything, Petunia Delilah is so purely excited for the experience that there is no room left for trepidation.

  “With positive thoughts and calm emotion, giving birth is easy,” Kimmy, her midwife, said. “Some of the things you think, they actually change your body. Good thoughts release biochemicals into your blood that can make the pain a happy experience. Thoughts become things.”

  Petunia Delilah isn’t afraid to be on her own when her contractions start. In fact, she has longed for the experience and the cherubic company of the little one who will follow. She has had ample time to construct elaborate, gauzy fantasies of baking cookies and breastfeeding and nurturing because she has been horizontal for weeks in the one-bedroom apartment. She will kiss Danny every day when he comes home from the construction site. Danny will kiss her back and then kiss the baby on the forehead. They will eat supper together and laugh together and make such a great family.

  Anyway, if she was to go into labor, Danny works just a few blocks away, pouring concrete for the Baineston on Roxy. He could be home in a few minutes. Petunia Delilah and Danny got new cell phones so she could call him if she needs anything. She glances at the wall clock above the toilet and thinks his shift will be over soon. He’ll probably go for a few drinks with the guys though, before coming home.

  Petunia Delilah turns from her reflection in the bathroom mirror and ambles into the kitchen. She opens the freezer and stares at the box of ice cream sandwiches for a moment before opening it. She runs her index finger over the stack of tightly packed sandwiches inside, entranced by the smooth, rhythmic bump of one sandwich to the next. Each wrapper emits a crackly static as she tickles it. They cool her fingertip, the chilled plastic silky to touch.

  Six individually wrapped fucking ice cream sandwiches in my freezer, she thinks. And I can’t even have one.

  Petunia Delilah folds the box’s cardboard flap closed, slams the freezer door, and turns the electric kettle on.

  No coffee, no caffeinated tea, just these shrub clippings, she thinks.

  She fingers through a ceramic jar of herbal tea sachets when it hits, the most peculiar of the peculiar twinges she has ever felt. She drops the jar. The base chips, and a spray of powdery ceramic ejecta stains the counter near the sink. The jar rolls noisily to one side and then back halfway again.

  Petunia Delilah instinctively reaches down and cups her belly. She drops her hand lower to where it touches wet fabric, deceptively wet as the temperature of the fluid makes it barely distinguishable from her own skin, but there’s an undeniable weight to the fabric that wasn’t there moments ago. She watches a rusty puddle spreading on the linoleum from her feet and wonders why it’s not clear, like Kimmy told her it would be.

  My water broke, she thinks. It’s happening. The baby’s coming. I have to call Danny. Our baby is on the way.

  Petunia Delilah and Danny have resisted Dr. Ross’s encouragement for ultrasounds, amniocentesis, and even the scheduled C-section he recommended given the smallish nature of Petunia Delilah’s pelvic girdle and her family’s history of birthing trouble. They didn’t want to learn anything from the doctor. They wanted to give birth naturally, without painkillers or radioactive pictures of their baby in her womb.

  After all, as Kimmy the midwife pointed out, women have been giving birth for hundreds of thousands of years without modern medicine.

  Not for the first time, Petunia Delilah wonders if it’s going to be a boy or a girl. Kimmy says it will be a boy based on how she’s carrying the fuck bubble. For some reason, Petunia Delilah is sure it will be a girl. She just feels it. She hasn’t told Danny, and she hasn’t told him she likes the names Chloe, Persephone, and Lavender. There will be time for that after.

  With arms outstretched and legs a bow, walking like she had just dismounted a horse after a weeklong ride and propping herself against the walls like a drunk, Petunia Delilah makes her way to the bedroom. She can’t help but smile as she gropes for the cell phone on the nightstand.

  As another twinge shoots through her nethers, Petunia Delilah winces. It’s an uncomfortable feeling but not as painful as she was led to believe by the baby classes they had attended. She speed-dials Danny. The phone rings three times before going to voice mail.

  “You’ve reached Danny’s phone. Leave a message.”

  Petunia waits for the beep and says, “Danny, the baby’s coming. Where are you? Come home. Call me. I’m calling Kimmy.”

  7

  In Which Garth Returns to the Seville on Roxy with a Secret Cargo in Tow

  “Oh, look it, look it, look it,” Danny says, all the words blending together to make one manic sound. Danny stops feeding the concrete mixer and leans on his shovel. His eyes track a young woman walking by the chain-link fence. “Damn, that’s fine. You know, I could watch that all day and find something new to love every second of it.”

  Garth swivels his head, following Danny’s gaze. Garth catches a glimpse of her walking by the fence. She has short brown hair, mysterious kohl-encircled eyes, and a gorgeous figure, slender shoulders with a plumpness below her pinched waist. Fit but still soft, smooth skin over firm muscle with just a little layer of padding. The summer dress she wears ripples like water, offering sensuous hints of her body whenever the two meet. Each time her body presses against the fabric, it offers a tantalizing, electric snapshot of what’s hidden beneath. The material pulls taut across her buttocks as she steps up one stair and into the drugstore next to the construction site.

  That singular moment, nothing more than flesh pressing fabric smooth, that moment will haunt Garth for the rest of the afternoon and deep into his evening. In it, Garth sees all he has ever wanted, something so beautiful and strong but still distinctly feminine. A spontaneous marvel that’s just there, unorchestrated, living in the universe.

  Garth closes his eyes to the warmth sprouting in his chest and revels in her image seized by his imagination. He drinks deeply from the impression of her captured in the darkness of his eyelids. He can almost feel the tickle of the summer dress’s fabric pressed against his skin and the slight give to the flesh slipping beneath it.

  “Hey? Do I got the eye or what? I would tap that. Totally. Just spank it a few times. Make it jiggle a little bit.” Danny’s wishful voice breaks through Garth’s peace.

  Danny creeps into Garth’s fantasy. Materializing out of a fog, there he is, naked Danny standing behind her, one hand smacking the woman’s buttocks and spitting a quivering, goopy pendulum of saliva into his other hand before rubbing it on his prick.

  It’s fitting we’re on this side of the fence, Garth thinks, and she’s out there. Animals in here, all of us animals in this zoo.

  “Shut up, would ya?” Garth grumbles, his eyes still closed, trying to rid himself of the vision of Danny behind the woman. He can’t shake it. After a few frustrated seconds, he lets out a blast of air and opens his eyes. He can’t get her back. He’ll have to wait until he gets home to concentrate on her without the vile image of Danny to sully the fantasy.

  Dan
ny’s already back to work, shoveling concrete mix in the spinning cement machine as if the woman was never a distraction. Garth takes a few moments, looks at his watch, and then glances up the street to the Seville on Roxy. That’s where he lives. The Baineston on Roxy is the most convenient construction site he has ever worked on because he only has a few blocks walk home. Danny lives in the Seville too, with his girlfriend, though Danny and Garth hardly talk or see each other outside of the site. Garth knows Danny’s girlfriend is pregnant because Danny talks about it a lot. He’s excited to be having a baby with her. Garth knows that they live in an apartment on the eighth floor since that’s where Danny got off the elevator the few times they rode it together. Other than that, Garth keeps to himself.

  Garth loves living and working on Roxy because it’s also close to one of his favorite stores, which is only two blocks in the opposite direction of the Seville. Almost daily, he slips away from the site and pops down the street during his lunch break. With so many coworkers around, he asked the storeowner if he could enter through the alley-side door. He couldn’t risk being seen entering it, but he couldn’t stay away from the shop.

  The owner nodded that of course it was okay—“Garth, you are one of our best customers.” And with that he handed Garth a package that had been wrapped in brown paper and then stuffed into an unmarked black plastic bag. His special order had come in that morning.

  Garth was so excited he ran into the alley and squeezed the package, not daring to unwrap it to look at the contents. The package was the size of a phone book and yielded a bit when Garth squeezed it. The paper it was wrapped in crackled, and the plastic bag that held the package whispered sweetly as air escaped. Garth sprinted up the alley to the street, a huge grin on his face. He spent the short walk back to the site working on containing his excitement, repressing the urge to jump or run while fist-pumping. He had calmed his emotions by the time he saw the chain-link cage, reconstructing his hard facade of manual laborer machismo. He wolfed down his lunch in the remaining fifteen minutes, and by the time the break was over, Garth was his regular stony self and the package was safely tucked behind his dusty lunch box in his locker at the site office.