Closure Part 15
The Styrofoam cups rustled quietly, their tiny hollow ticks and thumps filling the sudden silence in the frozen gray parking lot. Gail’s yellow eyes were wide, jaws agape, darkened teeth standing as black stones in a wintry stream of wispy steam. Her good eye locked steadily on the chrome surface of the cold coffee urn and while her other eye wobbled, it more or less joined the good one in surveying the shocking remains of the millwrights’ coffee service. Cindy broke the silence.
“What? What is it, Gail?” I held my peace, allowing Cindy to step up to the edge of the cart and look inside. “Jesus, Joe! Is that a coffee pot? What’s it doing in this trash?”
At that, both the women looked up at me expectantly. I licked my cracked lips and spoke, “You guys better keep your distance. Its contaminated, I have to..uh..,” I paused for a second. I must tell you now that the parking lot was still blue from the mercury lamps, but dawn was creeping up fast and color was gently returning to the world. As such, the spattered strawberry syrup-goop from Chuck’s innards, plastered across much of my body, was quickly turning from its apparent pre-dawn blackness to red. This was convenient, as the material was very eye-catching to the girls, who looked not at my shifty gaze, but at my irregular coat of red claret as I continued, “..I have to take it to the lab.”
“The lab?” asked Cindy, her perpetually excited voice growing more obviously puzzled, “What are you talking about? What’s that all over you?” I looked at Gail and noted with a sinking heart the more calculated set her paper thin lips had taken as they now pressed together–mercifully obscuring those damn teeth. I had no choice but to continue with the ruse I’d settled on back in the vacant lot. I shifted my gaze back to Cindy’s more credulous visage.
“The hazmat team, they had an accident, said this stuff had to go the lab, but they were all busy, and…” I realized I was babbling, and I trailed off for a moment. I looked back at Gail’s suspicious stare and endeavored to hide the worry from my face. I spoke again, holding shreds of cool together, “…I was already contaminated and they had their hands full. But you guys better get away from it.” Christ, I felt ridiculous, and tried to cover it up by gesticulating wildly in their direction, “GO! I mean it!”
Cindy stared blankly, her plump figure looking for all the world like an inflatable boppy-clown. In my desperation, I wondered briefly if she would bounce back up like my childhood boppy-buddy did if I were to punch her in those doe-eyes right then. I shook the thought from my stupid brain and looked again at Gail. This was probably it, I figured, judging from her hardened face and–good lord–her crossed arms, Gail wasn’t buying a bit of the bull-crap I was selling. Arms crossed, head set back, her mouth opened again to speak. My stomach was trying to crawl down into my small intestine as I knew that soon my lies and Chuck would be exposed; the thought of him being taken from me, dead as he seemed to be, was almost too much to bear.
Can you imagine the shock I felt when the first words out of Gail’s mouth were, “Cindy, we better get the hell out of here.” Cindy swiveled her head and looked at her carpool mate.
“Yeah, Gail?”
“Yeah, Cindy. You heard Joe, this is some dangerous shit. Get in the truck, I’ll be along in a second, ok?” Gail’s good eye never left mine for a moment throughout the brief exchange, although its wandering partner danced about my head and shoulders erratically.
“OK,” answered Cindy, “but you be careful, right?” she turned and walked nervously toward the truck, her twin hills of ass cheek quivering with fret, and she cast worried looks over her shoulder toward us. As she climbed into the cab of the pickup truck, Gail put her hands on her hips.
“I don’t know what this is about,” she said, “but Steve’s the steward on duty with the hazmat volunteers. Phil said.” Ah. Steve was an absolute fanatic about contract stipulations and obligations. He made great coffee to boot, and hosted weekly contract study groups in cafeteria 3 which were generally well attended by his peers. As an electrical system’s specialist, the work rules he operated under were among the strictest around, and his work-mates often sought his advice when conflicts of contract interpretation came up. He also, I remembered, had a spotless safety record. Gail had me here, and it was hardly necessary for her to finish, “He wouldn’t have lost a pot like this. And he would never allow you to transport contaminated equipment this way. C’mon!”
Crap. Crap crap crap. One last try, “well, it was one of his guys that tipped the pot into this… this goo. Steve said its probably safe, though, so he told me to take care of it.” I’m afraid I’m not the best story-teller, and this last line flew about as well as a lead super-ball.
Gail’s every little movement and expression screamed that she didn’t believe a word of it. I didn’t honestly blame her. But while her body said, you are lying and I know it, Minnetola, her mouth said, “Well, ok, then. I better let you get to the lab with your contaminated trash. Careful with that pot, its union-issue.” It was my turn to stare with mouth agape. A tiny smile broke the thin line of her lips, and Gail nodded with satisfaction at my surprise. She winked then, and turned quickly to her truck.
I didn’t move as much as one inch as she jogged around the cab to the driver’s door, jumped in and started the motor even before the door slammed shut. She dropped the truck into gear and her bald rear tires chirped once as she pulled away. Cindy and I exchanged stupid, blank stares as Gail drove past, and she turned her silly head to watch me as they drove around and out of the parking lot and onto Factory Drive. 
I would have continued standing there in the now-deserted lot, trying to parse out what hidden meaning Gail had impregnated that last sentence with, but in the distance a siren was still sounding, and was getting louder.
I dragged the partially disabled cart the last few steps around the back of my Pinata hatch-back, ignoring the squeal of the smashed caster for once. I was tired of holding the damn thing up, and my privates were still frozen from the long frog march from the other side of the factory. I fumbled for and found the keys to the Pinata and popped the hatch open. It was quick work folding the back seats down to make room and I soon pulled my emergency blanket from under the bed lining and tossed it over the bottom of the hatch as it pointed up at the pinkish-gray sky.
Multiple sirens now, I noted, and spared myself a single breath before beginning my grim work. I set the coffee pot carefully on the pavement, and apologetically set the lid on top. Reaching deep into the cart, I wrapped my arms around Chuck’s thighs and hauled back and up. I stepped back to clear his legs of the steel parts cart, and felt his heels thump my already sore knees. Trying to ignore the twisted black tubing and linkages protruding above his belt line, I pressed my face against his right butt-cheek and shuffled quickly to the bumper of my Furd.
I unceremoniously dumped Chuck’s severed lower body into the hatch and shoved at his ass to push it in as far as possible. I gently folded his legs up then, and paused for a moment, looking around the chilly lot to make sure I was still alone. I looked into the cart once more and was startled anew at what lay within. Intellectually, I knew Chuck’s face would be there, with a wide-eyed expression of surprise etched on his frozen face, floppy pink tongue stuck out with the courier typefaced plea of “Hide me, Buddy,” but it was still a disquieting sight.
The sirens were really kicking now, and I expected emergency vehicles to fly into the parking lot any second. I bent over the edge of the cart and, hooking my arms under Chuck’s pits, lifted his torso out of the cart it had called home for the last half hour or so. We were nose to nose then, and while it was still the handsome face of the man I considered my best friend, the clouded glaze of his eyes were unmistakably dead and seemed less real than I’d remembered.
Was Chuck really gone? The tongue had given me hope, but now I felt the hope slipping away. I closed my eyes and hugged his legless body, fighting the unexpected onset of tears. His rag-doll arms flopped and I heard a gentle plop as more of the gooey red fluid, squeezed from his abdomen by my desperate embrace, splattered on the ground at my feet. Pressing my face against his cold and crusty red neck, I afforded myself one short sob before turning and dropping him into the car alongside and partially on top of his lower body. Blinking away tears, I tucked the coffee pot between Chuck’s pelvis and the wheel-well and covered the entire lot with the emergency blanket. No time to inspect my work, I reckoned, so I simply slammed the hatch shut and ran up to the driver’s door. It groaned in protest as I tossed it open and plopped into the driver’s seat. I turned the key in the ignition and listened to the starter choke and chatter. Damn. I beat on the dashboard in frustration and tried again, this time starting it up successfully. Like any Pinata, it only lets out the good stuff when beaten. I floored the accelerator and was rewarded with a throaty rumble and pop, belying the tiny size of the engine; the muffler was full of holes.
As I pulled out of the parking lot and drove down Factory Drive, I was passed by two fire engines, a police car, and an ambulance. I dared not look at them, looking straight ahead; instead, I watched them in my rear-view mirror as I turned the corner and drove off into the rising dawn.
I swear I heard them chattering in the night, discussing their plans to eat breakfast at the International House of Pancakes. They wore denim jackets, and their pants were impeccable.
There has been a steady-state population of felines within my household, never varying from the running total of two. Dog population increased an alarming 100%. Additional data is being gathered in an attempt to explain this set of phenomena.
I’ve tweaked my stupid template to the point where changing to another blog provider is now depressingly daunting. Especially if you count the SafeTselector at the top of the page.
