Officer Passman believed he saw blood on the kitchen floor, and forced his entry when the young woman at home would not allow him access. Alleged blood was determined to be the crushed remnants of a red-ant infestation. As this was the third complaint, a $250 fine was issued for noise.
From the Hinton Weekly
“Edgardo!” You-hoo, Smelly Pants! When ya gonna get rid a all these ants?”
Crazy Mrs. Parker from 14C,
hollering down the elevator shaft.
August 3, 2012
24
Audrey Makes Five!
The man in the three-piece suit played “Heart and Soul” at the piano while the children ran in circles. Keith, Olivia, Kurt, Deirdre. Audrey was there, watching. Wishing that just once in her life, she could join in on the fun. They played Ring Around the Rosy, hide-and-seek, hopscotch—all the games she’d never learned growing up. “One! Two! Three! Four!” they shouted while leaping from cardboard box to box.
Everyone was at the party. Loretta Parker from 14C. Galton in his mask. Marty Hearst, red-eyed and weeping like a pussy. Evvie Waugh from 14D. He swung a rebar instead of Edgardo’s cane. Its head was clotted with hair and gristle. The rest of the tenants were there, too. Dapper and self-made, clasping cocktails in crystal glasses. Even their skin was their own creation.
The man in the three-piece suit scratched the ivories. This time, his skin had sloughed to reveal a faded beige skull, like he’d been dead for a very long time. “One! Two! Three! Four!” he shouted. Clara’s children ran in time, leaping from box to box, and Audrey sucked in her courage and joined them. What fun!
After a few stanzas, the piano began to play on its own, and the man curled his bony hands into a fist. “One!” he shouted, and extended his pinky bone. “Two!” his index finger. “Three!” his middle finger. “Four!” his ring finger. Finally, he opened his palm at her. “And Audrey makes five!”
The tenants in faded vintage finery clapped: right fingers against left heels of left hands like dainty sophisticates at the Metropolitan Opera. “And Audrey makes five!” they cried.
She smiled at the sound of her name (famous!), and broke away from the rest of the red-throated children, whose pajamas were so wet. Then she stacked the boxes together over the hole in the rotten wood floor and assembled them into the shape of a door. “Tah-dah!” she announced with her arms outstretched. “Look, you guys! I made that!”
The children stopped playing when they saw what she’d done. Motionless feet over swaying torsos, wet puddles at their toes. Doleful little blue peepers gazing floorward while they shivered. Little brats. They ought not to complain. At least the water hadn’t scalded them. Like any devoted mother, Clara had tested it on her wrists.
…Funny. How did she know that? And if this was a dream, why did her arms ache so bad?
The children wept with sniveling little faces. Dimpled fingers and cheeks, she could tell just by looking that they’d never missed a meal. Store-bought comic-book-character pajamas. The eldest was Iron Man. The girl, Pepper Pots. Audrey’s envy squirmed in her stomach like a worm. It got bigger as it writhed.
The children jogged in a circle around her and the door. Their hands were joined like a spinning wheel. They spun once, twice, three times, four as they sang with pretty voices: It’s the hard-knock life!
As they raced, the room changed, and time raced backward, too. Red velvet furniture, not hers (Clara’s?), rushed to the center of the den. Empty ice-cream cartons, wine bottles, and dirty diapers littered the now-carpeted floor. Flies buzzed. It got hot. High summer. July. The fourteenth floor; closed windows and no air-conditioning.
The children kept circling, and as they ran, their bodies grew gaunt and their clothing soiled. The velvet furniture crumbled and became a smashed pile in the center of the room that rose toward the ceiling and covered Audrey’s cardboard construction. The pile took shape, and became a door made from cherry oak and walnut, jigsaw puzzles, pulped self-help books, and toys. Shoddily made and lacking a frame, it rattled as if about to topple.
The children stopped circling. The door began to hum. And then, from down the long, dark hall, a woman’s deep voice cried, “Keith! Olivia! Kurt! Deirdre! Don’t hide from Momma!” Her voice carried, strong and resonant. It belonged on a stage.
The children shrilled as they ran: high-pitched screams and barks and moans. The red on their throats clarified into handprints. Thumbs up front: the better to squeeze you