Quiet Hours

We arrived from the east on a spring night and stayed in a cold shotgun with electricity running from the neighbor's place. Meech himself told us about the house, another fleck in a constellation of squatted ruin that constituted the man's empire. Cas was upset with me. There was a time when I'd try to address it but that was years ago. We kept our distance after leaving the house. I walked along the highway, went to bars with my gym bag, struggling to make small talk with all those varied chattering drunks. After some perfunctory conversation I'd pull a couple photographs of Nic from the bag and lay them out. "He was around here a while back. Maybe he looked like this," I’d say and finger the picture of him in his unvarnished state, a carnival street rat laughing on the evening patio of a drinking hole deep in the valley of Meech's lunatic kingdom, "or like this," tapping the one of him looking more like a schoolboy in khakis. These exhibits would invariably draw a crowd. Many would comment, "He looks like he'd fit in around here," and so on, but never the bolt of recognition I was looking for. The days were cool and glittering, but they weren't of much use in our effort, never anyone worth speaking to until the cacophony of rush hour, though I carried the photos anyway. Through parks, ports, cemeteries, and subdivisions, I walked all over. I rested at bus stops, certain that those who sat beside me had some purpose in doing so. I'd look at them with a bit of hesitation as they stared at the thicket of suburbs. "What do you want?" one woman asked. My head had craned itself somewhat close to hers in my lull. "Nothing," I said, more or less into her ear. "I'm looking for a friend." With that she jerked her head away with a grimace and I pulled mine back as well and turned towards the downriver highway. And there was Cas, always there in his strange silence, leaning against a concrete barricade observing the scene. Evening spilled over everything and traffic congealed along the highway and I returned to the bars, listening to the cackling and chattering drunks, smiling and nodding until I felt it appropriate to begin my routine.

A man recognized me. "You were here before," he said. We began to talk, or rather he talked and I made an effort to listen. It was banal, I don't remember what he said until one comment echoed strangely. I tried to grab it with a quick movement of my hand. "I'm sorry, what was that?" "What was what? The hotel?" "Yes, the hotel." "Well it's been sitting in that state for years, right there on the avenue. All kinds of people living in there, though you'd never know it." The hotel. I walked a long time to get there. Crowds split the night downtown and I went another mile until I could eye the place myself, spent a while looking for any signs of life or entrances but there was nothing to find. Back towards downtown a blimp flashed high above the interstate and the high-rises. I looked behind me for a moment to see Cas's long and emaciated silhouette, still far away. I spoke to the same guy the following night, asked him more questions about the building, told him there was no activity around there at all. He dismissed my comments. "Of course not," he said. "They're hiding." He moved on from it into some unrelated monotony. As he spoke, I saw the man come in off the street. I remembered that large wet face. His collar too tight, his swollen head. We made eye contact, there was frost in my stomach. He glanced down then back again and nodded. I steadied my breathing, didn't dare look for Cas. I gave it a couple minutes, doing my best nonchalance, and then I got up. "Got to piss," I said, cutting off the rambling drunk. Walking towards the bathroom I saw the man sitting in the back with a vantage of the whole bar. He was staring intensely at me. Past me. Towards the front entrance. I took the trash exit behind the bathroom and whistled to Cas who was around the corner vaping. I zigzagged back to the shotgun, looking over my shoulder. Cas followed slowly behind, not his problem. The next night we walked the long way back to the old hotel. I sat among the shadow of cars and clutter near the gated alleyway watching for anything at all. I looked towards Cas a couple times but he never looked back. Finally there was something. A man made a small commotion on the fire escape of the neighboring building. He drew from the window a two by twelve, balancing it on the railing, guiding it along the head of a small lamp post, and sent it straight over the void that separated him from the hotel’s parallel window. He crawled along his nightmare gangplank with all the grace of a critter on a power line, jostling a plastic bag ahead of him. I laughed to myself and looked back at Cas who was fixated on the scene, unwilling to give me the satisfaction of an amused glance. When I turned back the two by twelve was disappearing into the opposite window like a tongue.

The neighboring building was a notary, closed and locked, lights out. I walked to the upriver side to take a look around and then crossed the avenue to Cas. He watched me approach with his vacant expression. “I'm going in there.” He nodded. I knew he wanted to say more but wouldn't. “Are you coming?” He nodded again. He walked a few paces behind me and arrived as I was mounting the trash can. I looked back at him, thinking for no particular reason that we’d have some kind of reckoning as we do from time to time. Maybe he’d apologize, or I would, but nothing came of it. There'd be no more of that, I realized. The fence was easy to clear and soon we were at the fire escape. The ladder was partially lowered, enough to grab hold. The second story window opened into a gutted storage area. There were stacks of sheetrock and lumber. I climbed in and grabbed a joist board. Cas took the other end and we did just like the other guy, sliding it over the lamp post until it reached the sill of the open window opposite the alley. We situated it a little to the side and did the same with another, making it wide enough to crawl across with some delicacy. Cas put his weight on the boards until I was clean across and I did the same for him on the opposite side. The room was dark, just the smallest bit of light coming from the street. I shuffled my feet around and knocked over cans, styrofoam, an assortment of trash. I stumbled towards the dim impression of a doorway. No handle, flimsy particle board, it swung without noise or effort and the adjoining hallway was as dark and as brown as a flood. There was an indistinct hum echoing through the hall, maybe a generator. We passed room after room, all empty and littered with refuse. Bedding, boxes, vacuum cleaners, bicycle tires, stacks of sheet metal. There was so much salvage spilling from the doorways we could hardly make a straight path through it all. We took the stairwell to the next floor and it was no different. More littered, perhaps. I expected more of the same on the next floor. There were no surprises until I tripped over a man sleeping on the carpet among the teetering mounds of crap. He grunted, I screamed, I landed right next to him, cheek to cheek. I recomposed myself somewhat and apologized. He wasn’t dead but that’s all I can say. He didn’t utter a word, stared at us a bit, in a hazy way, and continued to lie there with the trash and electrical cords. We continued. Up again, more trash, conversations echoing through the hallways. Men squatted in the wreckage like gophers. I leaned over to one, a flower in the grove, and asked if he had a minute. He responded in an incomprehensible whine. I shined my phone onto a photograph of Nic. "You ever see this guy?"

"You need to put that light out! Put it out!" In my hesitation I saw the veins that webbed from his eyes and I cut the light without another word. As I walked away the man said, "Haven't seen your friend," and somewhere deep in the endless rubble someone laughed. I felt Cas's poisonous judgement. It was intentional, directed, a laser beam. "Someone might know," I said to him in defense. "He's not here." I pushed the door to the stairwell forcefully enough that it boomed and I ran quickly to the next floor. More clutter here, more bodies hidden in it. "Nic." I said. Maybe I shouted. I repeated myself. "Hush," someone said. From where, I don't know. So many hidden corners I didn't bother to look. "I need to talk to Nic." Cas grabbed my shoulder. "You need to be quiet," he whispered. "That's the most you've said to me all week." "Because you talk too much." I could see the irritation in his eyes. I pushed his hand away. He shoved me and I returned it, sending him into the trash. A man sprung from it like a jack in the box. "You bastards! Out!" Cas got up and shoved past me, back to the stairwell. I chased after him. "What do you suggest we do? What?" He began walking down the stairs but I pulled him by the collar, dragging him up instead. "This way. Not until we finish." "We're never going to find him like this." "I haven't heard a better idea from you. You saw the guy last night. We need to find him." He didn't say a word. "I'm not just going to wait around." His silence got to me like a rash. "Nothing to say? You don't care?" The next floor I was stomping, kicking over boxes, screaming Nic's name. A man stepped into my path and I tried going past him but that was a mistake. He knocked the wind out of me with a slight motion. "You don't come here looking," he said. He squeezed my neck and I dropped to the carpet. His silhouette consumed my whole view. I could feel the kidney punch blossoming in my stomach. "You're right," I gasped. He kept his grip, no tighter or looser. "Sir! You're right! I'm sorry." It didn't come out but that's what I tried to say. He let go, receded into the overgrown jungle of stuff. I got to my feet, dizzy, coughing, massaging my neck. He was still somewhere in that jumble but it was the weight of Cas's stare that harrowed me. I pushed him ahead, goaded him along my path. "No one cares," he said as I dragged him to the next door. It opened onto the roof. The city was out there. "No one cares?" I was still shouting. I was winded, my side hurt. I looked away to breathe. "You asked if I care." I wanted to pull his hair out. "But no one cares." An engine echoed down there somewhere. "Nic left because of you. And you're going to pay for it. And then this'll be over." "No, we'll find him," I said with the old tone, the way we used to speak. It felt so contrived I almost wanted to apologize. "We won't." "You're alright with that?" I was pleading now. His expression was as illegible as I'd ever seen it. He was disappearing for good. I felt sick. "Come on, man. Help me." I crouched onto the ground. I knew there'd be nothing in him I could grasp. "So what then, I'm screwed?" He was checked out, distracted, like he'd forgotten I was there. He straightened his shirt where I pulled it coming up. He started back towards the stairwell. "Cas." I said. I was shaking a bit. He turned around. My side was killing me. I tried to smile, tried to gesture my best apology. "Come on." He pushed open the door to the stairwell. Vanished. The whole night was quiet after that.