Gabrielle Taylor's "Cockluck"
March 14, 2002
The next morning Bertram bathed in the sink.
He unflattened his shoes and put them on with yesterday's borrowed clothes. The chromy gold clock in the kitchen read 9:06. He watched it blearily for several minutes before he realized it wasn't working.
It was a beautiful day, as crisply golden as a three-egg omelet, warm and dry, with almost no wind.
He walked up to the Billings Bridge Plaza and around to the Zellers department store at the far end. He bought a red metal snow shovel, a six-pack of white Haines t-shirts, a six-pack of white Haines cotton briefs, a six-pack of white tube socks, a package of plastic disposable double-blade razors, soap, toilet paper, shampoo, a sleeve of styrafoam cups, a jar of instant coffee, a box of sugar cubes, a set of cheap olive-green towels, two pairs of black Cherokee jeans, and a bright red bicycle. He changed in the men's room and drove the shovel home on his brand new handlebars.
He broke the rubbery yellow crime scene tape on his garage and shovelled the remaining garbage into a green plastic 230 liter garbage bin. He wheeled the bin down the sidewalk to Bank street and emptied it into the dumpster behind the Mac's Milk at Bank and Fifth Avenue. As he wheeled it back he whistled. He was charging his per diem for today, that's for damn sure.
He swept everything out of the kitchen cupboards with a corn broom, including a complete set of gold-rimmed Petro-Canada highballs stickered "free with fill-up (minimum $25 purchase required)". He pushed the trash into the garage and locked both doors.
Then he showered for forty-three minutes.
He shaved, brushed his teeth, slicked his hair flat back from his forehead, and dressed in new clothes. He might be a cheap new man, but at least he was clean.
He made instant coffee with four sugars and went outside. The house seemed less threatening now that he'd spent a night in it in someone else's underwear. All the windows were intact and the doors all opened and closed properly. All it needed was a little attention.
Not so the back house. Half the windows had slices out of them or were shattered altogether. The small sundeck behind it was missing four planks and the charred stump of the railing lay in a circle of ash surrounded by bricks from the front walkway.
As he inspected, he looked for signs of life inside the house. After that, he knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again, and waited some more.
Eventually the door cracked open and rattled against its chain. Bertram smiled engagingly at the girl inside. She was short and thin, with wispy brown hair pulled into a shoulder-length ponytail at her nape. She wore a knee-length white t-shirt that claimed she'd been to Vail, Colorado, and nothing else. She could have been fifteen or thirty.
She said, "Bruno and Kristen aren't here."
"That's fine. My name is Bertram Brooker. May I ask if you live here?"
"I live here, yeah." She bit her thumbnail, examined it, then rubbed the ragged edge against her lower teeth.
"May I ask your name, please?"
"Why? Who are you? What do you want? Are you a cop?"
"I'm a detective." He showed her his laminated wallet-sized correspondence school issue license.
"Wow. Cool. I'm Kelly. Are you, like, looking for Bruno? I don't know where he is."
"I've been retained by Judith to recover all outstanding rent due and to ensure her property is returned to its original and unoccupied condition. May I come in?"
"What does that mean?"
"It means everybody living here has to get their lunch money together to pay up Judith's rent, and then clear out all their shit, and clean the place up so she can rent it to other people by the end of the month, which is less than two "?"weeks away. Or I'll have to put a great big padlock on the front door and you'll have to go to court to get it opened."
"But I'm living here," Kelly said.
"You're living here today. You are not living here after the end of the month."
"What if I get her her money?"
"I'm open to suggestions."
"I'll try to find my roommates, okay, and we'll get the money. I'm, like, right in the middle of a sculpture so I really don't want to move, okay? Can I stay if I get the money?"
"I'll still need to inspect the premises." Bertram pushed at the door; the chain chittered.
"It's like a really big mess right now, because I'm working on this sculpture so my stuff's spread out like all over. Besides, don't you have to give me some notice? Like 24 hours or something? For an inspection? Can you get Judith to call me so I know it's okay? I don't want to just let anybody in the house and then maybe you'd steal stuff or burn it down and then it'd be like my problem."
"How about this. How about you call Judith, and talk to her about paying the rent, and ask if her brother Bertram is allowed to come into the house and make sure you're not, say, dealing drugs out of the kitchen," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, "like the guys in the big house were."
"Oh wow, is that what those guys were doing?"
"That's why the police were here yesterday, yes. I'm going to go now, I have to go to work. I'll be back tomorrow to look at the place." Whether you like it or not.
"Okay," she said, retreating into the shadows. "I'll call her."
Posted by gtaylor at March 14, 2002 11:46 PM