“Are you still looking for a job?” she asked.
I don’t remember telling her I was looking for a job, but I must have.
“If you are,” she said, “there’s an opening at the place I work for a person to stay the night as a deterrent to someone breaking in and stealing drugs. There’d be no one to order you around and they have a nice room with a cot and a TV for the person to stay in.”
“A night watchman?”
“They don’t call it that. You say you like to write at night and this would provide an opportunity. And if you nodded off, no one would mind, no one would know. It’s a very comfortable room. I’ve visited it. They let the last person go because he was stealing drugs.”
It sounded like the kind of job I wouldn’t mind. “It sounds like something I could do,” I said.
“Of course you could,” she said, taking my hand and then letting it go. “If I recommend you, which I will, they’ll be sure to take you. It’s a medical supply place that services several hospitals.”
I could use a job and this sounded preferable to whatever else I was considering. “You say there will be no one to boss me around?”
“I will tell them you’re a friend of mine,” Eva said, “and that you’re totally responsible.”
So two days later or rather two nights later I started work at Empire Medical Supplies as their night person. It was a nice room they gave me and it had a direct line to the police station for emergencies. For awhile the nights were uneventful, but I remained anxious, pacing the floor, unable to concentrate on my sentences, unable to read, sleep out of the question. They had issued me a pistol which made me feel at once dangerous and vulnerable to the unseen.
Eva visited on occasion, short visits, and those were the best times. She would ask how I was doing and I would say I was doing all right, not wanting to show her my inability to be at ease with my surroundings.
I didn’t know how long I could continue without going crazier than I already was. I reached the point I was hoping for some excitement. As Klotzman used to tell me be careful what you wish for out of desperation. Occasionally I would hear or think I heard someone fiddling with the locks on my door. I picked up my gun and stood alertly by but fairly shortly after that the noise stopped. Except this one time I heard a persistent banging on the door. “Let me in,” a voice cried, “I’ll make you rich.” A twenty dollar bill slid under the door. “There’s more where that came from,” the voice said. “Have a heart, whoever is in there.”
To show my incorruptibility, I slid the twenty dollars back.
“What’s it to you?” the voice said. “I just want a little opium and then I’ll go away.”
I thought of calling the police, bur outside of my dreams it was not my way to call the police.
He changed his tone. “Have a heart,” he said. “I need the stuff.”
He seemed to be waiting for an answer, but he didn’t get one.
Finally, about twenty minutes later, I heard some noises on the other side of the building. I picked up my gun and warily made my way toward where the sounds were coming.
It was dark and I held a flashlight in one hand and the gun in the other. “Who’s there?” I called into the darkness. I regretted not calling the police. I wasn’t even sure which was the room that stocked the drugs.
I called out several times and got no answer. Finally, I heard some movement and I made my way toward it at no great pace, hoping whoever it was would be gone when I got there.
I was in over my head and I figured whatever happened, this would be my last day on the job.
I went from room to room at my snail’s pace and was relieved to find no one. Whoever had been there had come and gone. I did find one of the cabinet doors open in one of the back rooms.
I made my report without apologies and expected to be fired. The odd thing was no one asked to talk to me or told me what was missing. It was as if nothing had happened.
I described the incident to Eva who seemed bemused. I told her I was ready to give up the job, but she urged me to stay another week. “You don’t want to let some junky break your spirit,” she said. “I’ll find out what if anything is missing.”
The next night was uneventful, but I heard sounds — wind blowing against windows perhaps — or imagined I heard them and I was on my guard.
Eva reported that a cabinet door had been broken open but nothing was missing. “Your calling out as you did must have scared off whoever it was.”
“The Head of Security is pleased with the way you handled it,” she said.
“I’m not pleased with the way I handled things,” I said. “One more week and that’s it,” I said.
“You’ll see how it goes,” she said. “Once the routine is established, you may even find it painless.”
The next few days I lay on the cot with the gun at my side. Every two hours I toured the rest of the building, shouting “who’s there” at no one as I made my way through the empty rooms.
True to my plan, I quit at the end of the next week and I had to go through the humiliation of being frisked before I left. Not exactly frisked, but I was told to empty my pockets, which I had first refused before doing as asked. So much for that job.
A few weeks later, I rented myself out as an assistant carpenter, for which I had some training, to a nice enough man who made porch swings. I know I said I didn’t want to work for anyone, but the guy who hired me, Andre, had an easy-going manner, and for three days work I made slightly more than I did for a whole week of night security.
Klotzman seemed to approve of my taking a job and it was good to have somewhere to go three days a week.
“That’s interesting,” Eva said, on one of our walks. “Ron is also a carpenter.”
The news didn’t surprise, though I went through the motions with Eva of seeming taken aback. Well at least I wasn’t working for Ron.
I hadn’t done any carpentry for years and I thought if I regained my skills, at some point I could go into business for myself. The job didn’t last long.
Two months or so down the road, I got a call from the Head of Security from my former job, asking me to come in for an interview.
“What for?” I asked.
“We need to clear up some odds and ends,” he said.
So I made the mistake of going in to his office.
“What are these odds and ends I asked him?”
“Well”, he said, not looking at me, “we had a recent inventory and we discovered a cache of opium was missing and we wondered if you might shed some light on the disappearance.”
“During my first week on the job there was a break in and it might have happened then. That’s all I can think of.”
“I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because there was no break in,” he said. “It was a staged event.” He lifted his head from his papers and stared at me,
“Who staged it?” I asked.
Harsh laugh. “Don’t you know?” he asked. “It could only have been you. All the evidence points to you. I tell you what if you return the opium, nothing will be said.”
“I have no opium,” I said.
“Have you sold it?” he asked.
“I never had any opium. You’re making a mistake.”
“Am I? Are you willing to take a lie detector test?”
Though I’d never taken one, I was afraid that with my free-floating guilt I wouldn’t do well. “I’d rather not,” I said.
“I can imagine why,” he said.
“No you can’t,” I said.
“Don’t give me any lip,” he said. “The first time I saw you I knew there was something fishy about you.”
So I agreed reluctantly to come back in two days and take the test, hoping I could get by.