David Ohle - The Old Reactor

“Actually there aren’t that many. I never see them anyway. They’re no trouble at all.”

“That’s odd. I stopped to check on rooms at the Heeney and the concierge said they were full. People were sleeping on the stairs and in the hallways.”

“Did you see them? Did you look in and see them, all these sleeping people?”

“I didn’t. I took her word.”

“These concierges are in cahoots. The fewer occupied rooms, the less work for them. They lie about occupancy. Give me a couple of hours to get a room ready for you, then come by and we’ll move you in.”

“That’s a relief to me, Moldenke. I’ll wait here, drink tea, and read. I brought my copy of the Treatise .”

“See you after a while, then.”

Moldenke needed the time not only to prepare a room but to do something with the concierge’s body. It wouldn’t be in good taste to invite Sorrel into his apartment with a corpse in plain view. She would raise questions and time would be wasted.

He began the process by going into the Tunney’s basement, where he’d never been, to see if it might be a good place to store the concierge until a better solution came along. Who would complain if he took over her duties and her apartment? The husband was gone, she was dead. No one would notice. Later, when he had time to kill, he would probably dig a hole in the basement floor and give her a decent burial. Meanwhile, he’d carry her down and lay her on a blanket. For now, getting Sorrel moved in was his chief concern.

He went down a long stairway into a brick-lined tunnel about twenty feet below the first floor and walked thirty or forty feet further through the tunnel until he came to a large, arch-roofed chamber with small, dingy ground-level windows letting in a faint light. A sign on the wall, stenciled in red, said: Shelter Capacity 100 . It wasn’t clear to him what that meant, but the room was deep and cool, the perfect place to store a body.

He went back up the stairs to get her and found a line of grumbling men waiting at the Dutch door. One of them shouted to him, “Hey, who the hell’s in charge here? You?”

“Yes, that’s me.” He stood behind the door. The men smelled of pine tar and wood smoke. “We need rooms. The goddamn Heeney’s burning down.”

Another said, “There’s going to be a lot of dead.”

Moldenke ran to the door and out onto the sidewalk. Over the roofs of other rooming houses he could see the Heeney in full flame, the main beam beginning to sag, promising to soon collapse. White smoke billowed into the cold sky. People ran this way and that. Screams could be faintly heard. A free woman rushing by stopped to catch her breath long enough to say, “A girl set her father on fire. He ran burning through the hallway, down the stairs, spread flames everywhere. It’s terrible.”

To Moldenke it could be none other than Salmonella and Udo. “I think I know them,” Moldenke said. “His daughter must have escaped from the Home. It’s a shame there’s no one to put the fire out.”

“Ah,” the woman said, “where would they get the water, anyway? Everything’s frozen.” She buttoned her collar and headed north into the wind.

Moldenke didn’t see that anything would be gained by going to watch the Heeney burn. There were men inside the Tunney waiting for a room, and a body to be taken care of. Sorrel would be there soon. He hoped she would dawdle awhile and watch the fire.

First, he would have the men register, then check their pass cards and give them room keys. He stood behind the Dutch door. “All right. There are four of you. Let me see those cards and you can have a room.” The men showed him their cards.

“You the new concierge? Used to be an old woman.”

“She went back to Bunkerville. I’m in charge now. I should tell you right away, there’s no toileting facilities here and the rooms can be as cold and as hot as hell.”

One of the men could see the concierge’s toilet from where he stood. “What’s that in there?”

“It belonged to the old woman. Her husband installed it. It doesn’t work anymore.”

“You better not be lying, you dipshit.”

“We’ll all be using the public one down the street. Here are your keys. You can go up to your rooms. Be thankful you weren’t burned alive.”

The men climbed the stairs, grumbling and cursing. When Moldenke heard the fourth door close, feeling sure the men had all gone into their rooms, he went to the concierge’s bedroom to get her and stood at the foot of the bed, planning to lift her feet, swing her around, and ease her down to the floor. That accomplished, he wondered what the simplest way to get her to the basement would be. The best, he thought, was to drag her. As long as no one saw him doing it, there would be no problem. For padding he strapped a small pillow to her head with one of her husband’s neck ties. He didn’t want it banging against the stairs.

He dragged her out of the apartment, past the Dutch door, and toward the stairs to the basement. All seemed to be going as planned, until the pillow slid off and her head thunked hard the last few steps. He left her in the domed brick room after arranging her stiffened arms as close to repose on the belly as he could accomplish. She looked a bit serene and saintly, Moldenke thought, particularly in the dim light.

When he huffed back up the stairs, there Sorrel stood at the Dutch door, weeping into a handkerchief. “They were lying out on the sidewalk, the ones who were burned. It was an awful thing to see. I feel faint.”

“You should lie down. Here, come into my apartment. Lie down on the bed.”

Moldenke placed her suitcase in the bedroom closet and offered to put Big Ernie somewhere, but she said, “No, I want him,” as she fell onto the bed with the ashes clutched to her breast.

“You nap here for a while. I’ll get your room ready. Bottom floor or top floor?”

“I don’t really care. I’m exhausted. I hurt from head to toe.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sick.”

Moldenke sat on the edge of the bed and thought for a moment. He glanced down to see where sunlight struck the floor, telling him it was about mid-afternoon. Perhaps Sorrel would sleep here the entire night. It would be a thing to hope for. He wouldn’t get her room ready at all. He would sleep beside her tonight in the concierge’s bed. Readying a room could wait.

He edged closer to her so that his thigh lightly touched hers. He was going to say, “Let me rub your back. It might relax you,” when he realized she was already asleep.

He didn’t want to rub her back now and take the chance of waking her, so he went into the bathroom to see if perhaps the pipes had thawed. A melting had begun, but by no means were the pipes flowing.

He returned to the bed and listened to Sorrel’s raspy, labored breathing. He didn’t want to think she was dying and thought of other things. There might be a radio in the apartment, one that would dial in a weather report. He searched every likely spot and eventually found an old portable in the drawer of a dresser, dusty and unused, the batteries weak. He turned it on nevertheless, and though the signal was intermittent he heard a Bunkerville news roundup reporting that near there a suspicious red cloud dumped an extra-heavy dose of radio powder on the Black Hole Motel, occupied by fifteen people. The motel has since been deserted. Then came a bulletin from Altobello: Radio poisoning warning issued for Old Reactor pond.

The batteries faltered and Moldenke could no longer make sense of the signal. He put the radio back where he’d found it.

The mail arrived. He could hear the postal carrier’s heavy footfalls and a tapping on the Dutch door. He waited until the carrier was gone before checking the mail. He didn’t want any further questions about why he was running the place.