Stone Rain

I found it under the listings for municipal government departments, then dialed the number. And got a recording. The offices were closed for the day. So who did you call when a health emergency occurred after business hours?

“So, like, do you expect me to get another job now? Are you and Mom going to gang up on me again?”

The fire department? The police?

“And what do you want me to do with this?” Paul asked. He was holding the Styrofoam container that contained my cheeseburger and fries. When I didn’t immediately answer him, he opened the cabinet door under the kitchen sink, where we keep the garbage bin.

“No!” I shouted. “We may need it for, I don’t know, evidence, to give the health department. Put it in the fridge.”

Paul screwed up his face. “What if somebody eats it?”

I opened the kitchen drawer where we keep all the odds and ends we didn’t know what to do with, like keys to unknown locks, bread bag clips, and batteries we aren’t sure are dead or still have a bit of juice in them, and picked out a thick-point Sharpie marker. I tossed it to Paul and said, “Put a note on it.”

I watched him write on the top of the white box, in big capital letters, “EAT THIS AND DIE-PAUL.” Then he put it on a middle shelf of the fridge, near the back.

I found a nonemergency number for the police, not wanting to tie up a 911 line with a call about a potential food hazard that might keep a call about a house fire from getting through. I was bounced from desk to desk, getting the same message at every stop. Not our job. Call the health inspection office in the morning.

“Shit,” I said.

Paul said, “What’s for dinner?”

I didn’t tell Sarah about the episode at Burger Crisp. I was responsible for enough chaos that she already knew about, I couldn’t see the sense in piling it on. I asked Paul if he’d mind keeping his mother out of the loop, at least for now, about what had transpired, or how, exactly, he lost his job. “If your mother asks why you’re not going to work,” I said, “just tell her they hired somebody else instead.” Paul knew Sarah was mad at me, and he didn’t want to make things any more tense around the house, so he said okay. His conscience wasn’t the slightest bit disturbed by participating in a lie. This was troubling, but given the circumstances, I was also grateful.

“But that place,” he said, “it was really weird to work there. There were these people dropping by, at the back door, and they weren’t dropping off buns or meat or frozen fries or any shit like that. They’d drop off packages, and then later, someone else would come by and pick up the packages. And Mrs. Gorkin, the lady who ran the place? She didn’t think this was weird or anything.”

It sounded as though I’d gotten him out of there just in time.

The following morning, after another frosty evening with Sarah, I put in a call to the city’s health inspection department from my desk in the Home! section. I got, much to my surprise and in clear violation of my preconceptions about civil servants, a woman who said if I gave her enough details, she could probably find the health inspector responsible for the part of the city where Burger Crisp was located. I waited, hearing her tap away on a keyboard in the background, and then, “That would be Brian Sandler. Let me put you through to his extension.”

A few seconds, a ring, and then, “Sandler.”

I identified myself, told him I was calling from the Metropolitan but left it a bit murky as to whether this was a personal call or he was being interviewed for a story, and quickly told him what had transpired the evening before. Said at least one person, according to my son, who worked there, had come back to the restaurant complaining of food poisoning. That the owner, and her daughters, were not particularly open to discussing any possible problems with the menu. There was the matter of the baseball bat, for example.

“That all seems kind of amazing,” said Brian Sandler. “I know the place you’re speaking of, that’s Mrs. Gorkin’s place, she runs it with her girls. Any time I’ve been in there, it’s always seemed pretty shipshape to me.”

I thought about the overflowing trash cans, the general appearance of the joint. Even before finding out there might be an actual health problem, the place looked a bit dodgy. If Paul hadn’t been working there, I doubt I’d have gone in. And now there was this other stuff, this business of dropping off packages, other people picking them up.

“Seriously?” I said.

“I’m looking at their file here, and they have a passing grade, Mr. Walker. I’ve been in there personally. Nice people.”

“Mrs. Gorkin?”

“You mentioned your son works there?”

“Well, not anymore. Not since yesterday.”

“Maybe you need to look into that. Getting fired, he might have had an ax to grind, you know?”

“No no, you see, that happened after the other thing. Look, we saved some food from there, so that you could test it. We put it in our fridge as soon as we got back home and-”

“I tell you what. I’m heading out this morning, and I’ll drop in, see how things are at Burger Crisp and I’ll get back to you.”

“Fine,” I said, and gave him my number. “Could you call me this afternoon and let me know what you find out?”

“I’ll get back to you,” Sandler said, in what I thought was a pretty noncommittal way, and hung up.

That’s when I realized Frieda was standing behind me.

“How’s it going?” she asked. “With the feature?”

I sighed. “It’s coming along. Look, I’ve had a few things going on I just needed to deal with, but don’t worry, you’ll get your story.”

“Because the thing is,” Frieda said, almost wincing, like it was hurting her to tell me this, “they want, well, I think Mr. Magnuson wants me to do a performance review on you. To see how you’re doing here.”

“A performance review. Frieda, it’s my second day on the job. How on earth can you be expected to assess my work for a performance review? I haven’t turned in a single story to you yet.”

“Well, that’s certainly true. But if Mr. Magnuson wants me to do it, I’m not going to tell him no. But I don’t want you to feel under any pressure. This would be a chance not only for me to tell you how you’re doing, but a chance to tell me how you feel things are going, whether you have any issues you want to raise, any goals, that kind of thing.”

“My issue would be that this paper is totally fucking me over at the moment, Frieda,” I said. She blinked. I continued, “I’ve gotten some great stories for this paper, but Magnuson feels that because they sort of fell into my lap, or more accurately, because I stumbled into some deep shit a couple of times, I don’t really deserve any credit. And then some dipshit reporter from a two-bit paper in the burbs figures he can give his career a shot by sabotaging mine-may he get trapped in a Wal-Mart cave-in, the son of a bitch-and now I’m sent to the exclamation point section, working with you, no offense, because this is the first newspaper department I’ve worked in where you get cookies in the afternoon, but this is not really where I want to be, so when you do your performance review, in the part where it talks about attitude, you could put down that mine could be categorized as,” and I thought a moment, “miffed.” I smiled. “Yes, fucking miffed.”

Frieda’s mouth was half open. Finally, it occurred to her to close it, and she said, “It’s true. You really are an asshole.”

I tried to think of something to say, but Frieda’s comeback seemed so out of character that I was struck dumb. We seemed engaged in a staring contest when, thankfully, my phone rang.

“I better get this,” I said. Frieda walked off and I grabbed the receiver. “Walker,” I said.

“It’s me,” Trixie said. “I called to apologize.”

“Yeah, well,” I said.

“I haven’t been totally honest with you.”

“I kind of figured that.”

“I’m not going to ask anything else of you. I was wrong to put you in an awkward position. I took advantage of our friendship.”

I said nothing.