Free Afterlife by Paul Monette

him on principle, but now he was just another greaseball, meek as a burro, his truck full of tooth-shy rakes and caked shovels.
    Dell drew a square of paper from his work shirt pocket, though he’d already memorized the number. When they answered at the Department of Water and Power, he asked to speak to the commissioner. He didn’t exactly disguise his voice, though he did try for a resolutely American twang, so as not to implicate his people. “Yeah,” he said to the bimbo who answered the commissioner’s phone, “you got a reservoir up by Castaic, right? Well, you got a problem.”
    â€œI think you want the engineering department, sir.”
    â€œOh no, honey, I want you. See, I just dumped a gallon of blood in there.”
    â€œLet me transfer you to Violations.”
    â€œIt’s AIDS blood.” Finally there was a pause, a break in her bimbo stride. “See what I mean? You got a problem.”
    He hung up. As he strolled over to the takeout window, the Bloods were selling a gram vial to a scrawny girl about sixteen, indifferently pregnant. The glazed boy who took Dell’s order was serenely abstracted from the crimes of the Pioneer parking lot. There was a bucket of chicken for everyone, pimps and dealers and terrorists all. Dell went away with two bags brimful of junk, and not another thought about his threat to the public safety.
    He checked on the men in Hancock Park, who had stripped four trees of their summer growth. He listened, straw hat in hand, while the matron of the house berated him for cutting her elm too close to the bone. Then he raced to the Westside to give bids on two big landscape jobs. Then he made his maintenance rounds, leaf-blowing and watering in the hills above Franklin. These were his oldest clients, who still paid him only fifty a month.
    He knew every green thing in their yards and liked the quiet, for no one was ever home. The autumn blast of heat had killed off all the annuals, but under the trees the flowers would not quit—beds of impatiens, baskets heavy with fuchsia. His grief was at its lowest ebb in the old hill gardens, as he hummed and showered the ferns with spray. Expertly his thumb controlled the flow of water from the hose, as if using a nozzle would be cheating.
    He didn’t even listen to the radio in the truck as he made his rounds. A proper terrorist would’ve been glued to the news, waiting for a bulletin. He picked up his crew in Hancock Park and left them off at a corner on Olympic, where crowds of brown men waited every morning for day-work. He got home around five and dozed in front of the tube. He didn’t seem to pay much heed to the local news, hardly rousing himself when Linda came in to cook up some rice and chicken.
    But there was no report of the incident, though the news stayed on till seven, through four different segments on the National League playoffs. Every half-hour saw an update on a plastics fire in Reseda and a baby born in a hammock. Dell was silent as he ate his supper, Channel 2 droning irrelevantly, while Linda read him a long rambling letter from one of their sisters—a christening and a funeral, all in one week, the seamless web of celebration in the dusty squares of Morelia.
    Abruptly Dell stood up when he finished eating, crossed to the television, and slammed the button to turn it off, the only sign that he was impatient. Still, Linda didn’t take it personally, even when he disappeared into his room without another word. If anything, she thought he was doing better with the pain. Better than she by a long shot. She cleared the dishes and sponged the plastic tablecloth, tears for Marcus stinging her eyes. But she didn’t require any special attention. She kept her sorrow secret. As long as Lorenzo Delgado looked all right and didn’t cough, sad was happy enough.
    Cross-legged on his bed, Dell pulled the scrap of paper from his work shirt and dialed another number.