Julie Hyzy - Hail to the Chef

My throat raw, I managed to say, “Thank you.”

WHEN I FINALLY REACHED MY APARTMENT building that night, I’d taken to heart what Mrs. Campbell had said, yet I felt strongly that it hadn’t really been Gene’s time. With the new knee, his determination to be part of the White House Christmas preparations, and the intensity with which I knew he approached safety issues, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not right. With wonderment, I realized, too, that it had been just this morning that the First Lady and I had been sequestered with Sean in the bunker. It seemed like it had been weeks.

James sat in the front lobby. Although my building’s owners hadn’t hired James to sit at the front desk and screen visitors, they encouraged his continued cooperation by reducing his rent. A win-win situation. James, with his fixed income and empty apartment since Millie died, enjoyed the constant busyness. The building’s owners liked the idea of the added, albeit limited, security James provided at the front door.

Though his build was slight, James had a deep voice. He greeted me with a gusty, “Hiya, Ollie! How’s the president today?”

I answered as I usually did. “Great. He sends his best.”

James laughed at our little joke. “You’re home kinda late,” he said. “I bet it’s a lot of work to prepare for a White House Thanksgiving.”

James loved any presidential tidbits I cared to share, and although I never gave him information that couldn’t be found online or in the newspapers, he always felt as though he was getting the scoop from me. I started to answer, but a random thought stopped me. “Is Stanley around?”

“I saw him go up a little while ago. Why? You having power problems in your apartment?”

I shook my head. “I just want to ask him a couple questions.” Realizing swiftly that Gene’s death would make the early news tomorrow, I added, “We had an accident at the White House today and I just want to pick his brain a little.”

“An electrical accident?”

“Yeah, but if Stanley ’s done for the night…” I let loose a sigh of frustration. Stanley was another of our building owner’s priceless finds. He took care of building maintenance in return for a small stipend and free rent. I wondered if, when I retired, the mighty owners would consider putting in a restaurant on the main floor and give me free rent, too. “I’ll try to catch up with him tomorrow.”

But James was already dialing. “This may be a matter of national security,” he said with mounting excitement.

“No, not at all-”

He waved me quiet when Stanley answered. “I’ve got Ollie down here at the desk,” James said, his voice low, and heavy with importance. “She wants to talk with you about an electrical situation at…” He faltered a moment, looked at the receiver, then continued, very slowly, “… at the location where… she… works. You got that?”

He hung up. “ Stanley will be right down.”

“You didn’t have to-”

His voice barely above a whisper, he asked, “So what happened? Are you allowed to talk about it?”

“You’ll hear more tomorrow,” I said. Before I could bring the words forward, my stomach dropped, silencing me. I didn’t want to say it out loud. Gene was dead, but talking about it to someone who didn’t even know the man made this afternoon’s tragedy seem gossipy and trivial.

James’s eyes were bright with anticipation. “Yeah?”

There was no question about it making the news tomorrow. Heck, I was sure it was racing across the Internet already.

“Our head electrician was… killed today.”

James’s mouth dropped. “Electrocuted?”

“Autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow, but that’s what it looks like.”

“Electrocution is a bad way to go.”

I looked away. “I know.”

“You didn’t see him, did you?”

The elevator dinged its arrival, sparing me from having to tell James that I’d been the one to find Gene. I could already sense James’s fatherly comfort welling up. In a minute he’d rise from his chair to pat me on the back. I didn’t want that right now. All I wanted, really, were answers. Maybe I’d never get the ones I sought. But maybe Stanley…

He alighted from the first car on the right, his graying hair mussed on one side, his face creased, his pajama shirt tucked into blue jeans, and his feet in house slippers. “What happened?” he asked, bouncing alarmed glances between me and James. “What kind of emergency?” Stanley ’s words tumbled out fast, more slurred than usual. Probably owing to the fact that he’d been sound asleep up until a moment ago.

I reached him before he made it to the desk. “No emergency,” I said, placing a restraining hand on his arm. “I just have a few things I wanted to ask you. But I didn’t mean to wake you up. Really-this can wait till tomorrow.”

James boosted himself from his seat, eager to join the discussion. “I told Ollie you’d want to help her right away.”

Stanley blinked twice. “’Course. But I can’t do much until you tell me what happened.”

This was not going the way I’d planned. But there was no sense sending James back to the desk or Stanley back to bed at this point. Both were waiting for me to spill whatever revelation they thought I carried. Except for the three of us, the lobby was empty, the elevators quiet.

I wanted information. There seemed but one way to get it. I told them about Gene, about finding him outside the elevator closet, about the subsequent news of his death. The two men standing before me stood silent a long moment when I finished.

I got to the crux of my reason for being there. “I thought there were safeguards against electrocution,” I said, addressing Stanley. “Gene wasn’t working on power lines. He was inside the White House. A residence. Things like this shouldn’t happen, right?”

We’d drifted back toward the entry desk and Stanley rested his hip against it. He scratched at his gray-stubbled chin. “Well,” he said slowly, “the problem is, electrocutions do happen. Not too often these days, but still…” He ran his fingers across his chin again, staring just over my head. “What was he doing?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I said. “I know that one of the rooms was out of power, and I know he was drilling something.”

“Go over it all again, real slow.”

A phone call pulled James’s attention away from our conversation. Still feeling guilty about waking Stanley up, I decided the best thing I could do was to make this interruption worth his time. I launched into a detailed play-by-play of the scene, starting when I found Gene on the floor.

“Back up,” Stanley said. “How did you know he was restoring power to one of the rooms?”

“We’d talked about it earlier, and then right before he started the repairs. He had just complained that the power should’ve been fixed before and that he wasn’t using his favorite tools…”

“What was he using?”

I described the tool belt, the old-fashioned drill, the stepladder.

As Stanley pondered that, I continued, “Gene was always such a sweet guy, but he was in a bad mood today. With all the problems, though, I couldn’t blame him.”

This time, instead of rubbing his chin, Stanley ran his hand over his mouth. Talking between his fingers, he said, “Can you describe the drill?”

“It was old,” I said. “Black, but shiny where the paint had worn off.”

“Shiny?” he repeated. “He was using a drill that wasn’t insulated?”

I had no answer for that.

“What was he drilling?” Stanley seemed agitated now. “Where was he standing when this happened? Describe it.”

I desperately wished I had more details, but even scraping my brain to provide the best account of the incident I could wasn’t working; I knew it came up short.