A Question of Will Page 15

  Another blast of raucous laughter; Joli banged the table, made empty pitchers shimmy. Paul just groaned.

  It was just after eight in the evening. They were esconced in a booth at the Gaslight Tavern, a bar and grill located some four blocks west of the Rescue One Station. Situated in a former residential house re-zoned for commercial business, it was dark and smoky and built for the business of helping cops and firefighters let off steam after a hard shift.

  Mickey D., the Gaslight’s owner and reigning presence, was a barrel bellied lifer who ruled over the establishment with gruff efficiency. Amenities were basic -- pool table, video poker, jukebox, a TV over the bar -- as was the food, which featured hoagies, deep fried cardiac fare, and perhaps the worst pizza in the tri-state area. But the booths were private, the bar honest to God mahogany with a real brass railing, and the drinks were both cheap and plentiful. Mickey kept a generous last call policy, especially to those on the job. And when non-smoking legislation threatened to snuff out butts in bars across the state save for private clubs, he sold memberships for a buck and renamed the joint the Gaslight Tavern Social Club.

  At the moment, Paul was feeling pretty social. The beer was flowing. Johnny Lang was pumping on the jukebox. It was the first time he’d been out with the guys since it happened, and it felt almost like normal, his mind drifting for ten, even twenty seconds at a time without thinking of Kyra.

  A dark-haired, full-hipped waitress brought a fresh pitcher, carted away the empties sprawled before them. Dondi winked at her.

  "Thanks, Angie," he said, then hoisted the pitcher sloshing to fill everyone’s mugs. "A toast," he said, raising his. "To Paul... good to have ya back, man."

  "Fuckin’ ay," Tom said. The others readily agreed, clinking glass with rousing good cheer.

  "It’s good to be back," Paul confessed. "I don’t know how much more paperwork I could take." The others nodded. He had been on 9 to 5 in-house admin duty -- filing and collating house reports, doing general scut work -- since the funeral. Now he was back on full rotation -- two days on, one day off, two days on, two days off. The first two were day shifts: seven a.m. to seven p.m.; the second set, nights -- seven p.m. to seven a.m, a total of forty eight hours per. They had just completed the first round; the shifts flipped every other week. It was a crazy-making schedule, guaranteed to wreak havoc on personal lives.

  But given where Paul’s personal life was, it was almost a relief.

  "You haven’t missed much," Joli assured him, "Mostly more proof that Darwin was right." He nodded to Dondi. "Tell him about the plaster casters..."

  Dondi grinned. "We go on a run, kitchen fire," he began. "We get there, and it’s two old alkie queens making dinner. We put it out, no biggee. But then one of ‘em starts in with abdominal pains. Turns out they were messing around with plaster of paris before dinner and one of ‘em got the bright idea to take a funnel and pour it up his buddy’s butt. But then it hardens, right? So we gotta take him to County, and they surgically extracted a perfect cast of his colon..."

  Joli almost blew beer out his nose. "So the ER resident asks us, what happened?" he added, then pointed to Dondi. "And he says..."

  Dondi replied, deadpan, "... Guess he got more than his stovetop stuffed."

  The others guffawed caustically. Wallace shook his head. "That was really bad," he said.

  "That ain’t bad," Tom countered, then looked at Dondi. "Tell him about ‘Mr. Lucky’..." Everyone but Wallace started to laugh. The probie looked around, perplexed.

  "Who’s Mr. Lucky?" he asked.

  Dondi wiggled his eyebrows and nudged Paul. "You tell him."

  Paul groaned; the others hooted and cheered him on. Finally he relented, leaning in seriously.

  "About a year ago," he began, "the guys up at Iselin Rescue had this run: some guy was working on his motorcycle on his patio while his wife was in the kitchen. The guy was racing the engine, and somehow, the throttle sticks and the bike slips into gear."

  The probie’s eyes widened; Dondi jumped in. "So the guy grabs onto the bike, but it won’t stop. And it drags him right through patio door and dumps him on the floor inside the house. His wife hears the crash and comes running in, and she sees him on the floor, all cut and bleeding, the bike laying next to him, and the patio door smashed all to shit. So she runs to the phone and calls 911."

  Paul picked it back up. "They lived on a fairly large hill, and the wife had to go down several flights of steps to the street to get the paramedics to her husband. The Iselin crew shows up, but there’s too many steps to use the gurney, so they gotta use a stretcher. They haul him down and transport him to the hospital, while the wife stays home and tries to clean up the mess. She sweeps all the glass up, but then she sees all this gas spilled on floor. So she gets some paper towels, blots up the gasoline, and throws the wad in the toilet."

  The whole table snickered; Wallace was nodding like a dashboard doggie. Paul paused to sip his beer, and Joli jumped in.

  "So this guy gets treated at the hospital, and gets released to come home. But when he gets home all of a sudden he’s gotta take this horrendous dump, right? So he goes to the bathroom and sits on the crapper, and while he’s there, he lights a cigarette. And he drops the match into the bowl."

  It was Tom’s turn. "Meanwhile, the wife’s in the kitchen," he began, "when all of a sudden: Ka-BOOOSH! She comes running in and sees her husband laying on the floor: his pants blown clean off, and his butt roasted bright red. So she calls 911 again!"

  Joli tag-teamed off him. "But the same crew ends up getting dispatched!" he said. "The ambo gets there, and they go all the way back up the steps, load butt-fried hubby back on the stretcher, and start hauling him all the way back down. And while they’re going down the stairs, one of the guys asks the wife how the husband burned himself."

  He paused; Wallace was transfixed. "What happened then?"

  "She told ‘em," Paul shrugged, deadpan. "And they started laughing so hard, they tipped the stretcher and dumped the husband out. He fell all the way down the steps and broke his arm in three places."

  The four firefighters looked at the stunned probie. "Now THAT’S a bad day!" they cried. Wallace stared for a moment, then sneered.

  "You guys are full of shit," he said.

  Joli slapped him on the back; everyone joined in the raucous reverie. Everyone but Paul, who suddenly was no longer laughing. He was staring at the TV over the bar.

  Dondi followed his gaze. On the tube, the fateful clip of Kyra and Will at the football game was broadcasting, sound off, the jukebox playing Lang’s "Lie to Me" in accidental accompaniment. A beat later it cut to an image of Wells, handcuffed in County orange jail togs, being led to a waiting van.

  "Jeez, Mickey!" Dondi called out to the bartender; Mickey D. looked up, saw the image, quickly flipped the channel to ESPN. He shrugged: sorry.

  But it was too late; Paul’s mood was gone. The days since Wells’ arrest had become a Skinner box of avoidance -- avoid the TV, lest he be assaulted by video voyeurs; avoid newspapers and radio lest he fall prey to ambush by print or sound. He felt increasingly like a rat in a maze, turning endless blind corners, with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

  Paul looked at his half-finished mug. "Son of a bitch," he sighed. The booth grew quiet. Dondi shook his head.

  "Not for nothing, buddy, but somebody oughta whack that little fuck."

  The others nodded in grim assent. "Fuckin’ ay," Tom said. "Shrinks and dipshits all moaning about his problems, and the system’s so fucked even if he does get nailed he’ll probably do juvie time and be back on the streets, just as fucked up as ever. I’m sorry, Paulie, but it ain’t right."

  "Seriously," Joli offered. "Remember those little creeps in Jonesboro? Eleven and thirteen, they killed four students and a teacher, and they’re gonna get released when they’re what, twenty? Twenty fuckin’ one? Records sealed, no hard feelings, have a nice fuckin’ life, right?" He swigged his beer, and Tom took over.

 
; "Yeah," he said, "I heard their shrinks said they’re ‘model’ prisoners now, making the honor roll and everything. They just needed help. Well, whoop dee fuckin’ doo. Nothing going on there that a dark room and a two by four couldn’t fix."

  "No." It was Paul’s turn to shake his head. "No."

  They all looked at him. "It wouldn’t do any good," he explained. Paul glanced up, gaze searching for someplace safe to land, found none. He realized they were just trying to help, but he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t allow himself to. "What gets me," Paul confessed, "is that it’s all about him now. His problems, his rights, his needs. What we want or need doesn’t matter."

  "What do you want?" Dondi asked, suddenly sobered. It was a serious question.

  "I want my daughter back," Paul said flatly. "I want to be able to tell her that I love her one more time. I want for none of this to ever have fucking happened. I want --" he stopped, features darkening as if overtaken by some sudden inner storm. Then it passed, leaving only sadness.

  "I gotta go," he sighed. "Julie’ll worry." Paul drained his mug, then grabbed his jacket and scooted out of the booth. The men looked up at him.

  "You okay?" Dondi asked.

  "Yeah, I’m good," Paul smiled wanly. "See ya Thursday, bright and early."

  They all nodded sympathetically. Paul zipped up his jacket , then turned and headed out, heading home.

  But somehow, he never made it.

  ~ * ~

  He meant to go home. He truly did. As he climbed into his car and started to drive, home was the destination in mind. Home to his wife. Home, even, to his goofy dog. Home to the life that was all that was.

  But he ended up on Marley Street.

  Paul had no clear recollection of deciding to go there, no definitive moment of turning the wheel and steering toward it. It came almost as he was thinking of something else entirely. What was the saying? Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Indeed.

  One moment Paul was in his truck; the next, standing on the dark, quiet street, tattered remnants of yellow crime scene tape still tied to the telephone polls, wafting in the breeze. One moment, he was telling himself you should go home, you should go home right now; the next, he was on the porch, staring at the faded orange police sticker taped to the seam of the front door. One moment he was reading WARNING: DO NOT CROSS, spelled out in bold black type.

  The next, he was inside.

  Strange, how quiet it was, it occurred to him. The interior was dark and chill as a crypt. Dozens of dusty footprints marked the floor, leftovers from police and crime scene investigators, like an army of ghosts, or a diagram for some manic dance step since fallen from fashion. Paul looked beyond them, saw the sheetrock, the plywood, the beams and nails and bales of insulation still stacked in the living room, the dining room, the hall. He flipped on a work light, hanging off a two by four stud. The exposed walls loomed: naked, ragged. Evidence of a job half finished. Paul moved through the house, through the living room Kyra would never see completed. The fireplace loomed dark and cold; Paul glanced at the mantle that Christmas stockings would never hang from, then moved on into the gutted dining room that would never host holiday dinners.

  Paul came to the kitchen Kyra would never make meals in. In the corner, the basement door hung ajar. Paul pulled it open with a creak, descended on rough and creaking steps.

  Downstairs, in the belly of the house, more building materials lay stacked and sprawled across the cold concrete floor — plumbing and pipes, lumber, gallons of stain and paint and thinner. Paul had hoped to one day build a play room here, a family room. Now it lay inert. Useless. Paul sat on the wooden steps and stared into darkness, as snatches of conversation came back to haunt him.

  "What do you want?" Dondi had asked.

  "I want my daughter back," Paul had replied. "I want to be able to tell her that I love her one more time. I want for none of this to ever have fucking happened--"

  Paul stopped. This was Kyra’s house. It was meant for her. She had died here. He couldn’t do anything about that. But he could do something about this.

  One moment, Paul had been driving home. Life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans.

  Paul stood and stripped off his jacket, and started to work.

  And so it began.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Over the next days and weeks, Paul seemed to all the world a changed man. Not happy -- as happiness would have been an unreasonable expectation -- but less tortured, resolute, like an earthquake or hurricane survivor emerging from the wreckage to rebuild. On Thursday morning he arrived at the firehouse bright and early, as promised, and worked his shifts with patience and diligent good humor.

  To the world at large it seemed perhaps the brunt of the storm had been weathered. And should anyone ask, Paul would be the first to admit that it felt good to be back in the swing of things. We all live with the illusion that life is certain, he would say to any who seemed concerned, but deep down, we know it’s not, and all we really have is today, and a dream. So we should live every moment like we mean it. If pressed -- which he hardly ever was -- he would confess that the source of his newfound strength was his love for his wife and daughter, and the need to honor Kyra’s memory. He had become a veritable pillar of strength, quietly determined to make sense of the senseless, the only way he knew how.

  On the job, this translated into a willingness to help, above and beyond the norm. When not actively engaged in the business of safeguarding property and saving lives, he was a figure in calm but constant motion, volunteering himself for the most onerous or mundane of chores without fanfare or complaint. He compiled work schedules, hydrant reports, training and NIFIR reports, monitored sprinklers and alarms out of service, took care of heating oil and supply deliveries, and managed administrative duties like a Fortune 500 exec. He polished company brass and chrome until it gleamed, cleaned kitchen and bathroom areas down to the smallest tile, became a demon for minutiae and care.

  On the home front, his energies redoubled -- covering both his and Julie’s share of the myriad domestic mundanities with humility and grace, the depressive neglect quickly evaporating under his seemingly inexhaustible efforts. Even the Thanksgiving decorations emerged from storage, little pilgrims and turkeys popping up on the front lawn as if by magic. When a package arrived from Julie’s mom -- a little plaque that read GOD, GRANT ME THE COURAGE TO CHANGE THE THINGS I CAN, THE SERENITY TO ACCEPT THE THINGS I CANNOT, AND THE WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE, Paul called to thank them, and hung it in the kitchen over the sink.

  As for Julie -- while the passion in their union seemed guttered and dwindling in the wake of tragedy, Paul seemed just as intent on demonstrating that the home fires, though banked, still smoldered, and would one day burn again.

  And then there was his other project: the house on Marley Street. When not at work or tending to home, Paul returned, sans Dondi, spending every day off, every spare hour behind closed doors, laboring in solitude, occasionally emerging sweat-streaked and grimed to procure new building supplies. He removed the remnants of past violation, installed heavy duty locks on doors and windows. Ordered some new how-to books. And began to build.

  When Dondi offered to help, Paul smiled and thanked him, but no -- this was something he had to do himself. It had become more than a simple restoration, more than protecting an investment or preparing a property for sale. It had become something both symbolic and personal. Something he was doing for Kyra. And for his own private need to restore order to chaos.

  Dondi understood. Everyone understood. As the wheels of justice in what had become known as the Wells case ground inexorably on, Paul’s actions were as understandable as they were ennobling. He was a survivor, valiantly attempting to rebuild his life. Everyone was rooting for him.

  And no one dared dream of the wrecking ball coming.

  ~ * ~

  Julie was screaming as Paul walked in: a wordless shriek of rage and lament that sent a jolt of adrenali
ne pounding through his system. Paul dropped the bag of groceries he was carrying, was running down the hallway before they even hit the floor, splattered eggs and squashed fruit rolling in his wake. It was just after four o’clock in the afternoon.

  From the living room, a crash: a glass ashtray, hitting the wall. Shrapnel clattered as Paul rounded the corner, saw Julie and Detective Buscetti standing, a stark tableau -- one manic, one frozen in place. Julie’s eyes blazed with fury. Buscetti looked at Paul, heavy with guilt.

  "Paul, I’m sorry," he said. "We just got word."

  "Word of what?" Paul demanded. His blood ran instantly cold.

  Julie whirled. "He’s out!" She spat. "He made bail!"

  "WHAT?!!" Paul cried. "But the arraignment isn’t until tomorrow!!"

  "It got moved up..." Buscetti confessed. " some screw-up shuffle in the docket... we didn’t even know until just before..."

  "Fuck!" Paul hissed. "Are you telling me we just got screwed by a Goddam clerical error?" He was livid. He had come to know just how unwelcome the victim’s families were at such proceedings, though the accused’s kin would be present, looking somber and well-dressed and playing to maximum empathy. And the D.A’.s office rarely found time to keep them informed, once the initial spate of headline grabbing concern had ebbed. But Paul had vowed to attend, no matter the abuse and added wound salt, just to represent, and perchance to look his daughter’s killer in the eye. Now he had been cheated of even this moment, and by what? By clerks. By faceless bureaucracy. By the very system he served...

  And that was when Julie started to cry -- bitter, gut-wracking sobs. She stormed from the room, ran up the stairs. The bedroom door slammed, her torment continuing, muted, relentless.

  Paul turned to Buscetti. "When did this happen?"

  "About an hour ago," Buscetti said. "I tried to call you -- "

  "I was at the store..." he glanced at the table, saw his Nokia lying inert, turned off. He’d forgotten it. "God DAMN it!"