his innocence.
We gathered up our things and walked out into the storm. The wind drove fine snow between my muffler and my sweater, and seemed to be scouring my face down to the bone. By the time we’d reached John’s Honda, a block from Lilith’s, even he was panting. Mona sat in front, staring at the snow. I dozed in the backseat while John crept the two miles to her apartment.
12
Shooting Up
Mona lived in an old building that had probably been rather grand when it went up in the 1920s. Back then, each of the six floors held only two apartments, those big ten-room jobs with a cubicle behind the kitchen for the maid. In the nineties, some developer had gutted the place, converting grandeur into shoe boxes.
The elevator itself was a small box, barely big enough to hold the three of us. Husband and wife—ex-husband, ex-wife—moved together unconsciously as we rode to the fourth floor.
When we got off, Mona’s apartment was obvious at once: wooden slats were nailed across the hole left by the cops and a padlock had been screwed into the wall to keep the door shut. The sight was ugly and shocking. Mona’s hand shook as she burrowed in her giant bag for her keys. John silently accepted the scarf, the book, the billfold, the wad of tissues she pulled out as she hunted.
I had that prickly feeling that makes you think someone is watching you. When I turned to look, I didn’t see anyone, but down the hall there was a soft thud as a door was quickly shut. Some neighbor cared that we were here. I wondered if it was the woman who’d been screaming on television that she’d sue the condo board, that Mona Vishneski ought to be thrown out.
At last, Mona located her key ring, a plait of twisted metal, as laden with keys as a medieval jailer’s. It seemed to take her forever to go through them as she muttered, “No, that’s Ma’s storage locker . . . Oh, I think that’s Chad’s bike lock.” I resisted the desire to push her aside and work my picks into the lock.
When she finally had her door open and had stretched an arm around the corner for a light switch, I peered over her shoulder into the long rectangle that made up her living space. It had probably been an attractive shoe box a week ago, before the police tracked mud and salt across the newly sanded wooden floors and the area rugs that dotted them. One wall was lined with blond built-in shelves and cupboards.
Craning my head, still staying near the front door, I saw a stereo and a flat-screen TV. Mona didn’t have many books, but the shelves around the TV held pottery and treen, those small wooden objects whose original purpose always baffles me. The pieces were unexpected, and I looked at Mona again. What other unexpected depths might lie beneath that flat surface?
The kitchen stood at the far end, separated from the main room only by a kind of work island or maybe peninsula, since it was attached to the wall at one end.
Mona and John started into the room, but I put out an arm to hold them back.
“What all have you handled in here since you came home?”
Mona was startled. “I don’t know! How can I remember? The phone. I called an emergency service to put up the board and the padlock, like you saw just now, a place I used to use when I was at Mercurio. They remembered me and came right away, and while I was waiting, I’m sure I had a glass of water.
“I went into the bathroom. It was such a mess in there, Chad probably hadn’t even washed the tub while I was gone. I wondered if he’d taken his toothbrush.” She gave a hiccup which was half sob. “I stood looking at the sink and shaking my head over his messy ways like he wasn’t in a coma. They don’t know if he’ll recover, but you think these things automatically after twenty-five years: have you washed your hands, have you brushed your teeth.”
John put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
“I cleaned the sink. It . . . I don’t know, cleaning . . . When I’m upset, I clean.”
When I’m upset, I add to the landfill in my apartment. And then I’m more upset because the apartment is squalid. I wondered if there were drugs that could turn you