What a question. Most careers were just accidents, weren’t they? You wound up doing something after school to bridge the gap while you decided what you really wanted to do, and thirteen years later, you still hadn’t figured it out.
But what I’d really like to do is write, he’d add quickly. Some of the more arty ones might perk up a bit. But for a woman looking for some indication that success might lurk in his future, that was generally the last nail in the coffin.
“It’s going all right, Charlie. Thanks for asking,” Wanda said. He loved the shade of a drawl he heard on her words. Where had she said she was from originally? New Orleans, wasn’t it? “How was your last call?”
“Big, nasty old critter,” he said. “Dead as they get. Might be one or two more up there. We’ll see when I go back next time. He could have been the last.”
“Time for one more visit?”
Crap. All he wanted to do was go home and wash the stink off of him and open a beer, forget about his day, his life or lack thereof. He was even thinking he might try to hammer out a few pages on the novel he was writing, though he hadn’t written a word in months. Of course, he was always thinking he might do that. Instead he’d go home, eat fast food in front of the television, and then go to bed.
“Anything for you, Wanda. You know that.”
“You’re a sweet talker, Charlie.” Before he could flirt back, she rattled off an address. “I’ll text it to you, and the directions. I wouldn’t bother you this late, but the woman sounded really upset, and the sales team is gone for the day. She says there’s something huge up there, making a lot of noise.”
“Oh, really? Most things are pretty quiet during the day.”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Well, I’ll check it out.” He decided to go for it. “So, Wanda. Will you still be there when I get back in?”
In the crackling silence that followed, he felt a wash of disappointment. He’d blown it. She was just flirting to be friendly. Not interested. Now he’d gone and ruined their easy working relationship. He was about to backpedal by asking her to sign his overtime form.
But then, “I might be, Charlie.” There was that smile in her voice again.
“Something I can do for you?”
He cleared his throat. He knew his voice sounded too boyish sometimes. Women didn’t always like that. He tried to modulate it slightly. “I was just thinking-um, wondering if you might like to get a drink.”
When she spoke again, she dropped her voice down low. He knew she wouldn’t want any of the other people in the office to hear. “I’d like that, Charlie.”
He felt the first smile he’d felt all day, maybe all week. Hell, maybe all month.
“Then wait for me, Miss Wanda,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
“See you soon.”
In Charlie’s experience, service people were almost invisible to the rich. And once he’d disappeared into the attic, they generally forgot about his existence entirely. Through the thin ceilings of shoddily constructed homes, he’d heard people say and do things-awful things, funny things, embarrassing things. Some of it he wrote down, hoping his observations might come in handy for his novel, if he ever sat down at his computer again and managed something more productive than downloading porn.
He’d heard a toddler call his mother a bitch; she’d slapped him-he’d heard the sharp smack of palm against flesh-and they’d both started to wail. While he was plugging up a hole mice had chewed through some drywall, he couldn’t help but eavesdrop on a man having phone sex and jerking off in his garage while his wife cooked in the kitchen.
I love you. I hate you. Take me hard. Don’t touch me. I miss you. What time will you be home for dinner? Don’t forget to call your mom. He’s away on business this week; I can’t wait to make you come in his bed. Can you bring home some milk?
He was a silent witness to the full rainbow of the human experience, from the mundane to the tawdry. This condition wasn’t informing his fiction, as he’d hoped. It was causing him to prefer the company of rodents.
“There’s something up there. Something big.”
The client was unapologetically old, with a snow-white head of tight curls, a face where skin hung like melting wax, but thin and alert. She had bright blue eyes that seemed to assess him from head to toe in a blink-not in a judgmental way. In the way of the wise, knowing, accepting what is. She wore a snug pair of jeans and a big sweatshirt that said ATTITUDE PROBLEM. Her Nike trainers looked like they’d seen some miles.
Wanda had said the old lady was upset, but she didn’t seem upset to Charlie.
“I can’t get to the attic anymore, or I’d find it myself and beat it to death with this.” She glanced toward her cane, lifted it a little for emphasis. “I’ve had every critter imaginable up there-been in this house more than fifty years. Never heard anything like that.”
She looked up at the ceiling, and he found himself doing the same.
“What did it sound like?” he asked. They’d climbed two flights of stairs together-in spite of the cane, she was fast-and now stood beneath the attic entrance. He was still catching his breath a bit. It was a big, old house, a veritable museum of dusty carpets, mediocre oil paintings of nature scenes and stiff-looking people, heavy, ornate furniture. A grand piano in a room filled with books, working fireplaces with mantels covered in framed photographs. Beds with handmade quilts, dolls reclining in window seats. A real house, echoing with life lived-full of memories and irregularly shaped rooms.
“Thumping, banging. Almost… rhythmic.”
Probably not rats. Raccoons did a lot of thumping and pounding for some reason.
“Okay, Mrs. Monroe,” he said, reaching up for the cord that would release the attic door and ladder. “Let’s see what you have up there.”
The door came down easily, and he unfolded the ladder until it reached the floor. Mrs. Monroe flipped on a light against the encroaching darkness. He looked at his watch; it was already after six. He wondered if Wanda would really wait for him or if she was just being polite. Maybe he’d go in and find a note-Sorry, Charlie. I had to run. Another time? He wouldn’t be surprised; he didn’t have much luck with women. After a few dates, they always seemed to want to be friends. He was already feeling the crush of disappointment before they’d even had their first drink.
“You just be careful,” Mrs. Monroe said. “And holler if you need anything.”
He hoisted his bag over his shoulder and climbed up, feeling the old ladder groan beneath his weight.
The only light source in the attic was a small circular window at the far end. But in the waning hours of the day, it just served to create a field of shadows. He could stand but with an uncomfortable bowing of his head and scrunching of his shoulders. He pulled out his flashlight and shone the beam around, expecting to hear skittering, maybe something knocked over in flight. But there was only silence. Boxes, an old rocker, a small rolltop desk-a landscape of old and forgotten things. Why didn’t people just get rid of their junk? The old lady said herself she hadn’t been up here in years.
He looked around the floor for feces, lifting his nose to the air for the telltale smell of urine. But all he smelled was dust and mold as he made his way through the junk-an old radio, a box of rotary phone parts, piles and piles of books.
He was sniffling, holding back a sneeze, by the time he’d reached the end of the space. He looked out the window. He could see the roofs of other houses, the church steeple peeking through the gold, brown, and orange of northern fall on the trees-oaks, maples, some old pines and birch, aspen, sycamore. A Florida native, he loved the seasonal slide show of the North-the bright green springs and tawny autumns, the black-and-white winters. All he knew when he’d come up for college was the perennial summer, the swaying of palms, the white sand against green ocean. A beautiful single note that wavered only in extremes of weather-hurricanes, dramatic thunderstorms. Bright, hot sun and still, stifling air, or black skies and ferocious winds, sheets of rain. A couple months of perfect, dry, seventy-degree winter weather seduced the folks from Michigan and New York, only to leave them wilting when August turned to September turned to October and the weather still rivaled saunas and blast furnaces.