I can't find my
shoes. Why is my purse open? Where are my
keys? My roommate turned the
machine off when she left, and the coffee was cold...at least I was able use it
to wash down some energy pills. The
frigid, bitter swig gagged me into some sort of conscious state, I guess,
because I realized that my purse was full of all my crap and nothing was
missing, and I was wearing my goddamn shoes.
I checked the time on my phone as I shoved it into the nest of receipts
and Skittles bags in my purse...6:48 am.
The ferry left late this
morning. I know, it's probably not the
best idea to use its departure horn as an alarm clock. I've found that I'm up on time more often
when I wake to it...I guess it's because I can't hit snooze on a boat. Some days, though, like today, it bites me in
the ass. Bunk says I should set an alarm
and use the ferry horns. I know it makes
sense, but she has her ways and I have mine.
Five years of being Army roommates had provided us the opportunity to
replace privacy with the intimacy usually reserved for couples ready to celebrate their fiftieth
anniversary. Done with our enlistments
but unwilling to live apart, we decided to think of our attachment as a
positive redefinition of codependence and moved our Unger- Madisonesque
paradigm to San Francisco. It was a good
decision, and one that we never regretted.
Except on days she shuts the coffee
maker off before leaving for work.
I hauled ass toward the BART station,
hoping that the train gods, too, were running a bit late. As quickly as I could, I wove through the
people on the sidewalk. Fuck. This fog hadn't come in on little cat
feet. It was more like it had come in on
the hooves of a herd of wildebeests and moved with the same ruthless
urgency. I sighed with relief at the
train's open doors and fought my way on, rewarded only with immediate regret. Being late for work was preferable to being
sandwiched between a pissed off Prada clad blonde and a whiskery brute
emanating the scent reserved for those who toss around the morning's fish haul. I closed my eyes and tried to gather my
thoughts, but was interrupted by Prada-suit.
Apparently, she was tired of being eye-fucked by the fishmonger, and I
was the closest distraction that didn't portray outward signs of being a
registered sex offender.
”You off to work?" I nodded, and she sighed heavily. "I wish I could wear sneakers to
work. What place lets you wear jeans and
sneakers, but makes you carry a portfolio?"
"The City Morgue," I said,
and flinched, waiting for the standard reaction. And Prada didn't disappoint.
"Ugh. You work in the same building that there are
dead people?" She gagged and
recoiled as far as she could, considering the circumstances. "But you just, like, answer the phones
or something, right? Or order the
funeral flowers?" She held her
breath in anticipation.
"I'm the Medical Examiner." Prada stared at me like I had a corpse fridge
in my pocket.
"So you..." She trailed off.
"Yes."
She turned
slightly and smiled at salmon-cologne, who whispered that I was creepy. She nodded, her hair bobbing as he tilted his
head to look down her blouse.
Creepy? I always get this reaction. Always. I am not creepy, goddammit.
I walked into the morgue and relaxed
a bit. Weighing various internal organs
may not make for a great conversation starter, but it does involve a pretty quiet
work environment.
"You used my espresso machine,
Francie. I know you did, and don't even
say that you didn't," shrieked my assistant as he glided into the room on
wings of rage. "You fucked it up
again, and when I tried to use it this morning it shot espresso all over my
Armani shirt. Armani, Francie. I saved for a month to buy this shirt, and now it's covered in espresso." Calmly, I began laying out the instruments
for my first autopsy.
"Curtis, doesn't that machine
cost, like, three grand?" I
asked. "For that price, it should
work after someone runs it over with a truck.
And I didn't touch your coffee maker, so chill out."
I had totally used it. Turns out
three thousand dollar coffee makers don't like grocery-store espresso. Who knew?
"You wear scrubs at work,
Curtis. Why were you wearing Armani
anyway? Dead people don't impress
easily."
"You did touch it! You're a bitch, and you owe me a new
one. You're the doctor, don't you have
enough money to buy your own? Why do you
have to screw mine up?" He stomped
off.
I put a check in my mental win
column for making him scream like a harpy, and began to cut the paper off the
hands of my morning work, trying my best not to notice that he was missing half
his head.
Several hours later, I walked
outside and lit my lunchtime cigarette. The
midday sun had burned the fog off, and I was hungry.
I walked into Bunk's restaurant,
nodding at the bartender and I entered the kitchen. I leaned on the prep table, waiting for Bunk
to finish steaming the clams for a bordelaise.
"Did you know I was coming, or
is that supposed to be for someone else?" I asked.
"You're upset," she said, as
she poured wine into the clam pot and ignored my question. "Someone else call you creepy?"
I briefly laid out the morning's
events. She "hmm-ed" quietly,
and poured brandy into a ramekin and slid it across the cold metal table at me.
"What do you think?" I asked her, booze burning my tongue.
"I haven't decided yet,"
Bunk said, and turned around suddenly.
She walked over to her young sous-chef and looked at his pan. Calmly, she explained that his sauce was the
culinary equivalent to the Armenian genocide.
She walked back and stirred the clams.
I took another sip from the cup.
"Why are you staring at
me?"
I didn't really know why I was
staring at her.
"He graduated from the Culinary
Institute of America. How does a
graduate from the Culinary Institute of America fuck up a sauce?"
"How do you have such passion
for your job?"
"I like food, I like
efficiency, and I like things clean.
Kitchens have those things, and those things make me happy. Why?"
"I want to love my job,
too. But I hate it."
"That's bullshit," Bunk
said, ladling the steaming clams and broth into a wide bowl. "You love your job. You hate close-minded assholes that equate
embalming with Dahmer sympathizers."
"I hate my assistant," I
said.
"He'll shut up if you quit fucking with his stupid espresso
machine."
"But I love getting him to hit
that Mariah Carey decibel and shake his hands like he's having a seizure. It's so much fun."
"It's a shame that your
proudest accomplishment today is making your queer assistant flap his hands and
screech. I'm pretty sure that's a
frequent reaction for him," she handed the clam pot to her sous-chef,
shaking her head. When I left the
kitchen he was still holding it, too terrified of Bunk to decide where to put
it.
I walked along the pier, not wanting
to go back to work. I made my way
through the endless lines of sightseers, trying not to walk through anyone's seventeenth
panoramic shot of Alcatraz. At the end
of the pier I leaned on the splintering wood rail, breathing in the salt and
seaweed. The small waves glittered blue
green as they bounced toward the rocks below, and I felt more peaceful than I
had earlier. My cell phone chirped, and
I tilted it into the shade to read the message.
"Body on slab. Jane Doe vs.
Buick. Buick won. Detectives asking for you. -C".
I arrived at the morgue as Curtis
was opening up the bag of the woman's personal effects. Piece by piece, he compared each item against
the property list from the police. He
didn't look up.
"The cops left a few minutes
ago...something about a robbery. I
wasn't really listening. They said to
call if we found anything to help them identify the car that hit her."
My stomach sank. "It was a hit and run? In broad daylight?"
"Yeah. And she's wearing a wedding ring, but there's
no ID in her stuff and her cell phone was smashed in the accident. I'm almost done going through the stuff, but
all I've found are Chapstick, cash, and a pacifier. The cops are running her prints, but they
think it's a long shot."
"Well, we'll have to pull some
DNA and try to rush the results. Maybe I
can pull some strings with the lab tech," I sighed, pulling on my latex
gloves. Instead of the usual reassuring
feeling of the snap on my wrist, though, my blood ran cold. "A pacifier? She had a pacifier?
Please don't tell me we have a...."
He cut me off. "Yes, Francie, she had a pacifier. And no, we don't have a baby to cut
open. The cops took her to the ER, and
she's with Child Services now."
I pulled the instrument table up and
grabbed the tweezers, my face much closer to the body than normal to keep
Curtis from seeing my tears. I began
pulling paint slivers from the mass of shredded thigh muscle and yoga pant,
forcing my mind to focus. It worked, I
guess, because the ring of the phone through the tile room scared the shit of
me. Curtis answered it, and I tried to
breathe my panicked feeling into control.
He scribbled something on a pad of paper, and then dialed another number
rapidly. I picked the tweezers back up. I was curious, but indulgence wouldn't pull
evidence from her body.
It was times like these that I
remembered why I didn't fire him when he pitched fits over shirts and
coffee...because those were the only things that got him riled up. Ever. When tragedy struck, the Armani stained
bitching was replaced by the most even tempered, efficient person
imaginable. In spite of the situation,
I smiled to myself. If there were any
hands to leave difficult situations in, Curtis' moisturized hands were those. Feeling a bit relieved, I warmed the water
to shower the blood off her body.
"Her prints were in the
system," Curtis said as he grabbed a stack of blue towels to dry her
off. "Carol Rosales. She used to be a notary, so she was
bonded. The cops ran her info and found
her husband."
"We should call...."
Curtis interrupted. "I've already called Mr. Rosales, and
he's on his way down here to identify her."
"If the cops are that
sure...." I started.
"He asked about the baby so I
called Child Services, too. They're
bringing her here."
I smiled weakly at him. My brief thoughts of buying him a new
espresso maker were halted by the detectives escorting Mr. Rosales. I smoothed her hair and turned on the camera
that would display an image Carol's husband would never be able to erase from
his mind. I heard the brokenhearted yelp
as he recognized her. I braced myself
for the screams, or for the sobs so intense that they yielded only deafening
silence. Instead, I heard a squeal.
"Daaaa! Daaadaaaaadaaaaa! Hi!"
I turned the camera off and walked
toward the viewing area in time to see a bouncy haired toddler stumble across
the room, hands outstretched. Mr.
Rosales lifted her into a long hug, ceased only when the little girl stuck her
tongue in his ear, giggling wildly. The
police smiled sadly as they left the room and as the door clicked closed, Mr.
Rosales looked up.
"Thank you for finding me. Thank you for finding my daughter. Thank you for identifying my wife," he
whispered. "You do God's work
here." Unable to speak, I nodded
and began to walk toward the morgue. I
stopped in the hallway, though, and watched him for a moment.
He stood still, as if he were unsure
what to do next. The little girl
squealed and he looked at her. Smiling,
she kissed her hand and placed her wet palm over his mouth. He smiled back, his eyes the eyes of those
whose only choice is to ignore the defeat.
I watched as the large, suit clad man juggled the girl and her polka dot
bag and stepped into the elevator. She
pushed a button and shrieked with joy as it lit up and the doors slid
closed.
I walked back into the morgue as
Curtis was gathering his things to leave for the day.
"I finished up," he said,
handing me my sweater and portfolio.
"She's in the fridge and the notes are on your desk."
"He said we do God's work, Curtis," I said quietly.
"Well, shit," he said,
grinning. "If it's God's work, I guess we'll have to come
in again tomorrow."
He handed me a styrofoam cup, kissed
me on the cheek and walked down the hall.
I closed my eyes, smiled into the steam of the ridiculously expensive
coffee, and decided that I would come in again tomorrow.
Just not on the train.
