He carries a stuffed backpack, also dirtied up. If he puts his ear to it, he hears a soft rustling sound.
He checks the mirror, rubs more grease onto his face and over the backs of his hands, and then pulls on a wool cap, covering his hair.
Then he walks to the corner and waits for the bus.
Even at three in the morning, it’s unbearably hot. It’s only June, but Chicago already has that oily humidity so common during summer nights; part garbage smell, part sewage smell, with just a hint of Lake Michigan. It’s bright out-traffic, shops, streetlights-and the bus stop is especially well lit. To discourage criminal behavior, he assumes. He’s not discouraged in the least.
The movement inside his jacket is creepy, repulsive. He forces himself not to fidget, to keep the coat on and relax. When the bus arrives, green and white and almost as dirty as he is, he puts his quarters in the money box and the driver makes a show of not looking at him.
The bus has a few occupants. A single black man. Some college kids talking loud. A woman who might be a hooker. He sits in an empty seat and places his backpack between his feet. He stares at it, and tries not to think about what he’s got under his coat, tries not to think about what he’s going to do.
His stop comes up. He gets off the bus. There are a few people on the sidewalk, but not nearly as many as before. He’s sweating hard now, and can smell himself. It adds to his disguise.
The police station is ahead, and he hesitates. He’d been inside a few months ago, to get a layout of the place. This will work. He just needs to remain calm.
He walks through the front doors, up to the desk sergeant seated behind the bulletproof glass.
“I was robbed,” he says, putting a little alcohol slur into the words. Then he gives a fake name. Brian Pinkerton.
The cop frowns at him. He can guess the sergeant’s thoughts. No one likes the homeless. They’re a blight on the city. Who cares if one got robbed? But a crime is a crime, and they have to take the reports.
He’s told to sit down in the lobby and a police officer will be with him, but it may take a little while.
Which is perfect.
He takes a seat on a cracked vinyl bench the color of cigarette smoke, and places the bag between his feet like he did on the bus. But this time, he unzips the top.
There are half a dozen people in the lobby. An old woman, black and fat, obviously homeless, muttering to herself. A Hispanic lady who keeps dabbing at the tears in her eyes with a wadded-up tissue. Two white guys with various facial cuts and bruises. A man in a reverend’s collar. An angry-looking old man, swinging his cane around like he’s swatting flies.
The first cockroach climbs out of the backpack, hesitates for a millisecond, then climbs down the side and tears across the room.
Two more do the same thing.
Then thousands.
One of the white guys is the first to notice. He stands abruptly, pointing and saying, “Holy shit!”
His companion also stands.
“That is disgusting.”
The angry old man also stands up, uttering a round of expletives, the favorite being, “Goddamn!”
Crying lady leaps to her feet and runs across the room, screaming. The reverend watches, mouth agape, and then also gets up and retreats to a corner of the room.
The Chemist remains still, even as the roaches crawl up his legs. He’s been preparing for this for many months, breeding and feeding the bugs, sticking his hands into the roach pen to overcome his inherent squeamishness. He reaches inside his raincoat, pulling open one of the bags. Roaches erupt from the holes in his clothing like he’s bleeding them out of his veins.
The homeless woman also remains still as the roaches swarm her. He watches as several crawl across her face, and tries to remain just as unaffected as they crawl across his.
Someone is yelling at the desk sergeant, and two plainclothes cops come into the lobby, take one look at the stampede of insects, and join the old man in the “Goddamn” chant.
In a radius of ten feet and growing, the white tile floor has become brown with shifting white specks. Some of the roaches beeline for corners, cracks, hiding places. Others run in straight lines, apparently assured of their safety in numbers.
A female uniformed officer comes in, takes a look, and exits the way she came.
The Chemist stands, hands in his coat, opening more bags. He was hoping to free at least half of the bugs before they kicked him out, but no one is rushing over to grab him. More cops enter the lobby, and they just stand there, looking revolted. No one acts. One of them tiptoes across the room, roaches crackling underfoot like dry leaves, but he heads for the exit rather than trying to secure order.
There is more talking now. The Chemist catches the words filthy and homeless. Freeing the contents of the final bag, he walks toward the exit, pausing at the bulletproof glass to stare at the desk sergeant, ass up on his desk and feet raised from the floor as if the room had suddenly flooded.
“You got a bug problem,” he says.
Then he walks casually out the door and into the humid Chicago night.
CHAPTER 22
I SPENT THE NIGHT by Latham’s bedside, holding his hand. He had developed pneumonia, his lungs awash with pus and fluid. He was mercifully unconscious for a horrific procedure called a lung tap. The doctors and nurses used big words like empyema and nosocomial and rhonchi and pleural effusion, but none would give me the straight facts on what his chances were.
He looked terrible. His entire face seemed to hang loosely, as if it no longer was attached to the bone. His color was sickly pale, his red hair slicked to his head, his hand clammy and hot.
I played the fate game for a little while, thinking about my telling him to eat without me, realizing that if I hadn’t we would have eaten together and I’d be in the bed next to him. No one wins thinking those thoughts, but I punished myself with them just the same.
I slept a little, on and off, Latham’s mechanical ventilator oddly soothing. But I always awoke with a startle shortly after sleep began, panicked that the man I loved had died without me being there for him.
At a little after seven in the morning, I again startled myself awake, and looked into Latham’s eyes and saw that his droopy eyelids were halfway open.
“Are you awake, honey?”
I pushed a damp lock of hair off of his forehead and noticed his skin was cool. His fever had broken.
“Do you know where you are?”
His eyelids twitched, and I felt him weakly squeeze my hand.
“You’re in a hospital. You have botulism poisoning. It’s paralyzed many of your muscles, including your diaphragm, so you’re on a ventilator.”
Another light squeeze.
“It’s not permanent. You’ll get better, but it will take a few weeks. I was thinking… I was thinking about our honeymoon. I’ve never been to Hawaii. I was thinking maybe we could go there.”
His eyes closed again. I didn’t think he’d heard me.
And I had to go to work.
I went home, forced myself through some sit-ups and push-ups and a twenty-minute workout video, showered, searched my cupboards for food and found some instant oatmeal, nuked it, and forced myself to keep it down, even though my stomach didn’t like the idea. Then I threw on a light blue Barrie Pace wing-collar jacket, a matching skirt, and what I called my tough-girl boots-black suede Giuseppe Zanotti knee highs with low heels, rubber soles, and silver and crystal skull details on the ankle buckles. Socks, no nylons. Then makeup.
The sleep had helped reduce the enormous black bags under my eyes to only slightly gigantic, and my concealer made easy work of them. My mom, a cop herself, was never a fashion plate, but she taught me one valuable girlie lesson: The more expensive the cosmetics, the less you have to fuss with them.
It was humid, and my hair frizzed up in a Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio way. Straight-haired women all wanted curls, and I hated my curls and wished someone put out a shampoo that promised less volume instead of more. I checked my purse for mousse or gel or spray. All out. I was stuck with poofy.