Rain fills the ashtray by Gloria Apophasis

For a week, smoke. It hung—covering the building usually visible from the porch—before her, receding with movement but still there. The smoke was: it coated the back of her neck, stung nostrils (a fire without a camp, live wood burning way up north) and watered eyes into the useless black surgical mask she wore when outside, made her sleepy sitting on the tall stool at the bookstore register. For a week, she looked out the plate glass windows—beige sky bulged—and breathed shallow.

Yesterday it rained. Drops pierced the veil, smoke clung to moisture. Clouds formed and beige turned gray. Ragged strips of cloud shrouded all that she saw.

Today, L goes back to the bookstore. Still raining, it pours the whole walk from porch back door to the Loyola platform and train ride north to Howard. She waits, watching streams from the overhead cover splash to the electrified rails, water on rats and pigeons among broken bottles and slivered cellophane. she smells a campfire, embers extinguished by piss.

Off the Purple Line at Davis, she walks empty streets to the bookstore. Parking garages and high rise residences, their heights enshrouded, line the wide one way street flooding and flowing to the drainages at the curb.

She relocks the door and wanders to Savannah’s old station, a tiny desk in the children’s section. For a month after the move, a poseable mannequin, the kind for life drawing with blonde wood and a pole up its ass, craned its neck to snoop on Savannah’s tireless computer publisher orders. She kept knocking it down when Kim was on the sales floor, which led to chiding, so one Sunday before opening L got pissed and pulled out the pole, hauling each half down to the basement storage. She shoved it behind a network of rusted pipes where she guesses it lies today. Not like they sell t-shirts anymore, anyway.

Kim’s not in on Sundays: around the move she slipped on ice and fucked up her foot. Sundays are for PT; she still wears her big black boot even after all these months. Today, though, as L stares past the mannequinless space, the clump and velcro stretch of Kim’s limp creeps up the stairs. She shuffles to L with her skulltight smile, clean white veneers. “Hi. We have a problem.” Kim’s smile never ceases and her teeth hardly part. “I’m so glad you’re the first one here, Leonard.” When Kim’s here, L wants to walk into the Lake.

Leading her downstairs, Kim says, “I came by with the cash, you know after our incident the other day I haven’t slept very well, and came downstairs to—”

“Ah.” A layer of water covers the basement floor, staining the rug before trailing into the breakroom. “I see.” An industrial fan buzzes in the doorway leading to Kim’s office. “I’d appreciate if you move the boxes from my office to the workstation down here.”

“Are we gonna close today?”

“I don’t see why we should. People can, you know, step around the puddles. My, it’s one thing after another with us! I can’t believe my luck. To think I’m missing PT.” L pulls a navy bandana dotted by white fleur-de-lis from the back pocket of her jeans, folds it in half along the diagonal, creasing it once and wrapping the length around her head, folding the top flap over her hair, elbows up to pull the fabric tight. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it. Carol called out sick again.” Kim rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “You know, I’m worried about her. I’m starting to think she can’t do this job anymore. But, regardless, Annie will have to handle upstairs. The new one can help you.”

“Benne.”

“I think it’s Bennie. Not everyone needs a special name these days.” Kim throws up her hands. L still hasn’t clocked in. She finishes the knot and replaces her hands in her pockets. “Gonna unlock the door.” She runs upstairs.

She watches Annie pull the locked front door, peering in with bloodshot eyes. L shakes her head and shrugs with upraised palms, then lets in the high school grad. Annie groans, her thin blonde hair hanging in greasy strips to frame her face. “I’m so fucking hungover dude.”

“Damn. Of all the days.”

“Ugh.” She raises her head. Gray smudges under her eyes. “Anything special today?”

“Not really.” L informs her of the situation. “So, you know, have fun up here.”

“I can’t fucking believe we’re open.”

L widens her eyes and grins, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth, and puts a fingergun to her temple. Annie laughs then rubs her eyes with thumb and index, sucking air through her teeth.

Sloshing into the breakroom, L unslings her bag and sets it on the tiny table. Water in the coat nook looks deeper than out on the floor. She steps—is deeper; wet rushes over the sneaker’s tongue—and takes back her soaked foot. “Fuck.”

“For real” Benne stands in the doorway. “Hey L.”

“Benne. Like the basta. Happy second day.”

“Ha. Right.”

“Don’t forget to clock in,” L says. Benne grabs his time card from the black plastic slots leaning against the cement wall. Insertion into the gray plastic machine with the electric blue screen emits a buzz; the card shoots in and out. He replaces it, then shoves hands in pockets, his drawstring bag over his shoulder. Pursed lips, crowded by an overgrown mustache, curl up at the edges, and his thick black eyebrow cocks when he says,“Guess we gotta clean this shit up, huh?”

“Uh huh.” She grins, repeats her pantomime suicide. “You know?”

“Damn, like that?”

“Wanna walk into the Lake after this?”

“Oh sure, I got some rocks in my bag.” He sets his stuff next to hers. “Are we open today?”

“That’s what Kim wants.”

“I thought she wasn’t in on Sundays.”

“Usually.” She sighs. “After the cash incident though, we’re not allowed into the office. And since Savannah left, there was no one to put cash in the registers.”

A customer walks downstairs. Benne and L look on from the breakroom doorway. The customer returns upstairs.

He slouches to the sales floor to watch the water. “Like goddamn, man.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” She strides to Kim’s office, a windowless niche, and surveys the work. There’re three cardboard boxes, soft wet bottoms, sweating into a nice solid chest-high bookcase. “Bookcase too?” Kim stares blankly at her blank computer screen. “Hm? Oh, yes.” L hefts one of the damp boxes. Fingertips dig into cardboard flesh. Carrying it past Benne— “This shit first—” she dumps the box behind the workstation.

The adjacent storage room (a bathroom back when the cocktail bar of an Italian restaurant took up this space) contains a shop vac, an unusable toilet, a sink with a mirror. Glancing in the mirror, she says, “Jesus Christ,” and digs her bangs out from the bandana’s hairline. Benne drops his box next to hers; she drops her hands. He’s motionless and staring at her.

She walks back to Kim. “Want us to put stuff in the bathroom storage? It’s dry.” 

“Oh. Yes.” The skull smile returns. “Leonard, you’re a life saver. The man of the hour!” She gives two thumbs up as Benne pokes in his head and says, “Hi Kim, some second day, huh?”

“Ah, Bennie, yes. Well, no use complaining. You boys can move that bookcase by yourselves? I won’t be much help.”

“Leave it to us boys.” L, mirroring Kim’s grin, softens her voice and pitches it high. Kim doesn’t get it.

L shuffles thighs and ass between Kim and the bookcase, a gap about as wide as herself, and wedges her fingers between the rough concrete and tan, lacquered wood. She tugs and the case doesn’t budge. Jesus Christ. “Heavy?” Benne, hands in khakis, leans against the office doorframe. Kim’s eyes dart between his brown face and the filing cabinet to his left. So it’s still in the usual place: ha.

L tries the other end; a small scoot. Under the office’s stark white LEDs, Benne and Kim audience for her exertions, she maneuvers the bookcase to a forty-five degree angle from its original position. “Benne, can you get over there and push?”

“Yes, boss.” Benne pushes, L pulls, and Kim watches as they screech the bookcase out of her office, across the sales floor, and behind the register, a smudged black trail in their wake.

Things after that, for the next four hours, are simple. L props open the door to the flooded secret hallway inner wall storage to move box after box, each full of old publisher promo, unread Romance ARCs, toilet paper, napkins for events, paper towels. A single box is packed with old receipts—pins, tote bags, that mannequin—most from years before the move last winter. Benne joins her, soon taking over the job as L focuses on using the shop vac to suck up the water through its reticulated hose. Plastic girth undulates against her fingers. No one thought to install a vacuum bag; dusty water fills the plastic container, sloshing heavier each time she yanks the hose to reach a further gushing crevice. She removes the top and dumps the gray floodwater into the employee toilet, triggering the automatic flush by sudden intake, its roar buffeting her ears, thus marking her progress.

She exits the bathroom to Kim entering the sales floor, outstretched arms of the Redeemer, skeletal smiling looming beneath her bob. “Good job, boys! Lunch is on me. Papa John’s!”

In the windowless breakroom, damp and stale, munching stipend cheese pizza with bready crust after four hours of clearing water, L notices shimmering movement. She stands and the floor ripples. She points. Benne follows her indication then slumps in his seat. She says, “I need coffee. Do you want anything from this good coffeeshop across the street, The Depot? I’m getting a cortado.”

“A cortado? What is this, petite bourgeois?”

“Well, I mean, yeah, it’s Evanston. Do you want a cortado?”

“I mean yeah, sure, if you’re buying. Not gonna say no.”

“Like I said, happy second day.” She blows out her brains. “Don’t do a fucking thing till I get back.”

Outside it rains.

…

Steamed paper singes fingertips as she steps back into the street and resoaks her shoe.

The upstairs sales floor, wet and streaked, has no customers. Annie stares at her register’s computer screen, only noticing L after she passes by and starts to descend, calling up, “Make sure you get pizza!” One sneaker squelches on every second stair.

No customers down here either.

She sets Benne’s cortado on the breakroom table and uncaps hers to toss back the rest; she tongues inside for foam, soft deep breaths. She flicks the empty cup to the overflowing employee trash can, where it neatly lodges and stays.

The sales floor is silent. Hearing the employee toilet flush she rushes to the back hallway to check the storage room. Behind her, the shop vac turns back on, its rush and suck shut out by the slam and click of the basement hallway’s heavy scarred metal door.

Sweat on the white walls and green floor of the narrow humid back hall. The wet heat lays through her.

Kim’s standing before the locked storage door. The bookstore owner shuffles around; when she sees L her lips crawl up her teeth. “Leonard. Come.” She beckons, a gnarled joint set with French tip. “This is the only key,” she says, flashing it at L who holds out her hand. “I will never part with it.” Kim doesn’t see her reach, so L’s hand traces the outer seam of her right leg. The sensation, the ridge, it calms and focuses her in a base way; it’s something her hand does on its own, and whenever she notices it she knows she feels…she anticipates something. Kim opens the door for her and says, “I can’t enter.”

Past the threshold, no light. L hits the switch on the left. “Oh—” A lake of cardboard boxes, paper bags, ARCs long released, all suspended and dissolving in water opaque and dark beige. “Oh wow.”

“There’s a drain in there. Someone needs to wade in and uncover it so the floor can clear out.” Kim, a hand on the doorframe, leans. “You can do that, right?”

“Where’s the drain?”

“No clue. The guy who owns the building, I swear this man is out to get me, told me I just needed to unplug the drain, which he says I should’ve done back in February when we started to put stuff in here. I imagine he’ll make insurance a complete and utter hassle!”

“So you want me to get rid of the water. Once it drains…?”

“Do whatever. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Now, I’m heading out for the day. I need to remember to pick up the punch cards so everyone can get paid on time. We don’t want a repeat of the move, ha ha!” L stares into the water and says nothing. The clump and velcro stretch recede down the humid hall. The hallway door slams, locks.

She approaches the back wall, shoes slapping the water’s edge, which surely creeps up and over her feet. Shins push boxes, paper mush, the rubber on her feet scrapes unknown hard debris, rock or bone. What?

Ripples emanate, swollen waves smack the concrete walls and, in the back corner, bookcases. Which has to be where the drain is, covered. But she sloshes first to the other corners: the one behind the door is almost dry, same with its right adjacent. Direction unfixes in the crowded room. Two submerged corners, one with bookcases, the other with thick pipes, which hum and rush from the upstairs toilet.

Behind the pipes, the water cups her knees. Hinging her leg, she searches a blunt toe for anything on the ground like a drain. Her shoe sinks into soft, porous flesh.

Her stomach convulses, saliva fills her mouth; she spits a clear string into the filthy water.

She rolls the short sleeve of her work shirt and pierces the surface with the tip of her flat hand. The water lathers her skin, sucks her deep, her elbow’s inner crease tingles when licked. Fingers feel hard concrete. They find and grasp the mush, grip sinking into rot. She breathes shallow and fast, bilge up her smoke-scarred throat.

It’s an arm. White bone sticks out from the stub wrist. Forearm muscles and tendons blister the skin under her rigid fingers. The severed bicep hangs from a broken elbow. What?

Water laps the walls, the bookcases, her calves. One arm hangs at her side. Her hand holds what she found, and she stares down her nose, beneath her glasses, unable to breathe. It leaks out of her open mouth: ha.

She places the arm near the storage room’s door, and stares, in a crouch, hands on her knees, an odd whine in her ears. She feels high. The whine comes from somewhere in her soft palate. Spit drools from her open lips, pools where the hand should be on a dry patch of floor.

Ripping around, she sloshes to the bookcase corner, frothing whitecaps in the brown water. Cases block her path, a jumble of shelves, siding, old genre section tags, shelf talkers by old booksellers. Gripping whatever she can, she wrenches bookcases to the floor; shelves dislodge, sides split from their bases; pegs, old nails, screws, industrial staples stick from rent wooden flesh. She slams the last one into the deep water, then slumps, elbows on knees, out of breath. Dark beige laps soaked blue shins and calves. Black streaks her arms’ white skin, runneling dust, sweat, and water.

Bubbles. Bent and gasping, she stomps tired thighs through watery resistance. Rerolling her sleeves, her hand again pierces the surface, the hard floor scratching her fingers. Nails, catching on some rubber ridge, flex backwards. “Ah!” She straightens, stares at her fingers, rinsed and filmed with grit—the startling pain ebbs—then plunges again to wedge between rubber and concrete. Pup: a huge bubble bursts the surface as the water sucks down. The flood recedes into the open drain. She shakes her head and sighs.

Hairs rise on the back of her neck. She turns.

Limp shreds of cardboard, paper, with shelves and toppled bookcases, litter the floor. By the pipes, where she found the arm, a desiccated hand lays broken beside its wrist. The handless arm joins to a rotten, meaty shoulder sloping to a neck whose vertebrae stick out from blue-black skin. The body’s severed at the waist. A peeling head whose eyes, filmed a milky jaundice, seem apologetic.

She kicks her foot into the wet floor to pivot toward the door. An outstretched hand reaches for the knob. She pulls the door open to Benne’s tired eyes and ironic smirk. She says, “Oh, hey man.”

“I’m done. The water’s stopped and I cleared the rest. It’s also almost six…” He peers behind her. “Jesus.”

“I’ve been busy.” The words strain in her throat. “Goddamn girl.” His eyes search for an approval she won’t give. “You ok?” She thumbs over her shoulder. He looks, yelps, then laughs. “Fuckin’ creepy ass mannequin in the corner.”

“What?”

“The…” he points at the corpse, which is the mannequin, blonde wood stained by the floor water, rotted by its hours-long soak. The steel pole alongside it, detached from the base. The legs are gone. In front of the door, her grip still imprints the arm. “Oh. Yeah. We used to sell t-shirts. Crazy, I thought it was…” she leaves him waiting for the end of her sentence so he says, “I wanna ask you something, but we gotta talk outside. You smoke? I’m tryin’ to make this my last pack, so the more I share—” she raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms to bulge her muscles. “Sure I’ll smoke.” She looks around the still damp storage room. “But I should probably…”

“Leave a note. You did more than enough today. We fuckin’ both did.”

“Yeah, fuck it, you’re right, let’s smoke.” She looks at the room—mannequin still; all else strewn, still—and lets the door slam and lock behind her.

L and Benne walk silent, shoulder to shoulder, to the back hallway door, which he propped open with Infinite Jest. She removes it and locks the bolt behind her.

Sodden basement musk. The industrial fan roars in the doorway to Kim’s office.

Annie leans her tailbone against the edge of the upstairs sales counter, staring at her phone screen. L says, “Busy today?”

“Nope. Hey, look at my score in Temple Run.”

“Holy shit. Crazy. You still play Temple Run?”

“Hey, it’s fun, don’t be mean.”

“No, that’s awesome.” The three of them watch someone pull the locked front door, peer in with beseeching eyes. L shakes her head and shrugs with upraised palms. The person sighs and trudges away. “Well, Annie, I’ll close up and do the cash, you can go.”

“Are you sure?”

“Do you…want…to stay?”

“…no…”

“Ok, get the fuck out then. You clocked out? Oh, there’s no time cards, Kim took them. Oh—” L’s stomach drops to her asshole— “fuck, I forgot to clock in.” They stare at her, grit smiles, and say nothing. L’s face is blank. “Whatever. I’ll just, like, walk into the sea.”Annie’s mouth drops open and she laughs, a chirp. “Best of luck dude.” She grabs her tiny yellow backpack, and exits through the front door. L turns to Benne. “Smoke?”

…

The rain is an irregular drizzle. Clouds hang low, ragged wisps beneath a slate overcast. Back against the plate glass windows, L lights her first ever cigarette with Benne’s lighter. The harsh zip through her throat to her lungs makes her hack, sigh, and look back at the sky. Benne starts talking. She has a knack for withstanding cis guy spiels. But after listing the two other women he knows, he asks, “Cash incident?”

“Oh.” She taps ash awkwardly; it clings to her wet pants. “So, understand that in the…eight months I’ve been here?” The nicotine rush plus this fact makes her blink and shake her head. “Fuck my head feels crazy. But uh, it’s been a shitshow the whole time, I’ll tell you about it all some other time, but the thing with the cash is about two-ish weeks ago Kim discovered the cash deposit, a couple hundred bucks, had disappeared from the unlocked filing cabinet in her office. I know. And naturally she thinks one of us stole it, specifically Savannah, who left about a month ago and basically ran this place while Kim abused her. God—” no one told her that cigarettes rock like this— “I’m glad she’s out but I miss her.”

“Damn.” Benne, halfway through his cigarette, tries to make as much eye contact as possible but L’s all over the place. “What I bet happened is she, Kim, misplaced it, forgot, and assumed it was stolen. But you know, even if she finds it she’ll keep up this victimized narrative. I mean she probably already found it.” L coughs, heaves from deep in her belly. “Sorry, lots to learn on your second day.”

“No, thanks for telling me. We should all be on the same page as workers.” He sticks his cig tight between lips and stretches up both arms. They twist and fall to his sides. “Well, listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“Now this isn’t a guarantee. But the way it seems here, I’d want to think about organizing.” He lets the thought hang, then says, “Look, this place’s got no HR, no manager—”

“Anymore.”

“Right. And Kim does not trust us beyond our immediate use to her whims.”

“We never do business.”

“Exactly. We need protection. You need protection.” He lets that hang too. L occupies her vision with the sky. This cigarette does not focus her. The day took something from her and the nicotine, mixing with Benne’s ensuing monologue about unions, and all we have is each other, floats L to her apartment. Joints to roll and smoke, and shouldn’t she stop by Hahn’s for beer, and no food at home; the evening’s blended color and apocalyptic atmosphere makes her crave a walk, to obliterate herself with a spiritual stroll. She laughs, interrupting Benne’s thought, so she apologizes, thanks him for the cig, and tosses out tacit plans for further schemes. Benne hitches the drawstring pack up his back and steps down the street. She watches him, half a cigarette still burning between her index and middle fingers; grime stains the valley where they join.

Beer, weed, a long walk home: somewhere along the way she remembers about dinner, remembers she only ate two and a half pizza slices all day, and grabs a burger on her way to Hahn’s. She spends too much money. She wants to give herself something.

Gloria Apophasis lives and writes in Chicago, Illinois.