Flood (4 page)

THE BUILDING WAS OLD AND SHABBY. The name MAYO OO S hung above him in the rainy darkness in peeling green letters, the marooned o's a pair of spooky black spectacles watching him.

The lobby was empty. Silent. He made his way down a narrow hallway, his wet sneakers squishing quiet prayers on the worn linoleum floor. The faded green wallpaper was stained and torn in several places. A sign on one of the doors said,
JOHN ROONEY, MANAGER
. He knocked on the door.

Silence.

It was late; perhaps the manager was in bed. He knocked again, louder this time.

“Coming, coming.” A woman opened the door. She wore a faded pink terry-towel robe over her nightgown.

“I'm looking for Vincent Flynn.”

The woman was old, with tinted hair so wispy thin she was almost bald. She peered at Andy's face with milky eyes. “Mother of God! Who beat you, child?”

“It was an accident.”

The woman pointed a crooked finger at the stairs. “Twenty-four.”

“Thanks.”

The old woman watched him climb the stairs.

On each stair he said a prayer.

Smells of mildew and decay, stale cigarette smoke, fried bacon. He was trembling. He stood outside 24, listening. No sounds within. He knocked and waited. Nothing. He knocked again. He could hear the rattle of a truck as it bounced and splashed over a pothole outside in the street.

He tramped back down the stairs. The woman had closed her door. The hall was empty. He heard a toilet flush. An old drunk hobbled in from the street, came up to Andy at the foot of the stairs, and put out a hand, attempting to stroke Andy's head. “You're a fine young feller,” he mumbled. “Come to keep an old man company, have ye?”

“Leave me alone!” Andy flung the man's arm away.

The man staggered backwards, almost falling, blinked blearily at Andy, then suddenly zigzagged away toward a room at the back of the building, screaming, “Ow! Stoppit! Oooh! Ow!” as if being kicked by demons.

Down the hall, a toilet flushed again.

Andy was tired; he wanted to put his head down and sleep, but no, he was near his father. It wouldn't be long now. He could stay awake.

He waited outside on the street for a while, but it soon became too cold, and he returned to the inside and sat on the stairs. He could not keep his eyes open. If he fell asleep
in the hallway, the police might find him and take him back to Aunt Mona. Under the stairs there was a closet for housekeeping equipment and supplies. It smelled of cleaning fluid and a hundred years of dust and dirt. He crawled in and closed the door. Darkness. Nobody would find him here. He wasn't scared of the dark, he told himself. There was nothing to be frightened of; only harmless brooms and mops and plastic bottles of solvents. Nothing to be afraid of. He lay down on the hard floor and closed his eyes. Soon he would meet his father and he wouldn't be alone. Forget alone: think father, father, repeating in his head like the steady drip of a faucet. He could hear the buzz of a TV from the manager's room, like a bluebottle fly on a window. He was exhausted. He wasn't afraid. He fell asleep.

He awoke with a start, not knowing where he was in the darkness of the closet, thinking he was in the hospital. There were sounds outside of people moving about. Voices. Noisy boots and shoes climbing the stairs over his head.

Then he remembered. He was ALONE in a hole under the stairs. He had to get out. Acid burned in his stomach as he ran his hands frantically over the door, found the latch, pushed the door open, and peered out. The hallway was empty. Stiff and sore, he crawled from the closet, wobbled his way out to the street, and sucked in a lungful of cold air. He guessed the time to be well after midnight. He went back, climbed the stairs, and stood outside number 24. He took a deep breath to still his leaping heart and knocked on the door.

Nothing. He knocked again, louder this time, and was startled by a sudden burst of wild laughter from within. The door was jerked open.

An ugly, bearded man with an enormous belly said, “Howyeh?” He had a cigarette burning in the corner of his mouth. When Andy made no reply he said, “You looking for someone?”

Don't let this man be my father, he prayed.

“Vincent Flynn?”

The man stared at him. The cigarette was burning very close to his beard. “He's busy.”

“Who is it, Cassidy?” a man called.

Another man shouted excitedly, “Two bucks on Black Beauty!”

The fat man, Cassidy, turned and yelled into the room, “It's someone for you, Vinny.” He turned again to Andy. “You might as well come in.” He stepped back, holding the door open.

Andy stayed where he was.

“Come on in,” Cassidy urged. “Vinny won't bite you.” He laughed at his own joke. “Hey, Vinny, it's a wee lad.”

Andy peered around Cassidy's belly. The room was foggy blue with swirling cigarette smoke. Four men were kneeling on the floor, passing around a bottle of liquor, their attention on five huge black cockroaches scuttling and scrambling inside a miniature arena formed from cartons of cigarettes. It was a game. Five small piles of bills and coins lay on the floor. There were several ashtrays with cigarette stubs and burnt matches.

On the word “lad,” one of the men stood and faced Andy, regarding him quizzically.

Andy recognized him immediately. It was the skinny little man in the giant's raincoat who was selling cigarettes in the restaurant. He had watery blue eyes, and with his raincoat off he looked even skinnier than before.

“I'm looking for Vincent Flynn.”

The cigarette man replied with a happy smile, “You're looking at him: Vinny Flynn at your service.”

The Young Ones were already restless and homesick.

“The boy looks after himself very well without us,” they grumbled in the ancient tongue.

“He has found his father,” said another. “The boy is safe.”

“Not yet. It is too soon. We must wait and see,” said the Old One.

“We could be home having fun,” they complained, “playing with the traffic lights on Georgia Street.”

“Snarling up the middle lane of Lions Gate Bridge.”

“Crashing disk drives.”

“Jamming revolving doors.”

“Losing socks.”

“Credit cards.”

“Car keys.”

“Wait and see,” the Old One said again.

THIS MAN WAS HIS FATHER? Andy stared at the cigarette man for the longest time, unable to speak. Finally he said, “I'm Andy.”

Vincent Flynn smiled at him.

“I'm Andy Flynn,” he said again. “Your son. From Vancouver.”

The cigarette man's eyes widened in surprise. “Andrew?”

“Andy.”

“Is it you? I don't believe it!” He looked outside, down the hallway. “Where's your mother?”

“She's… gone.”

“Gone?” The cigarette man's face fell. “Holy Mother of God! You don't say? Judith? How…?”

The cigarette man really was his father: his mother's name on his lips made it true. “There was a flood… the house… everything.”

His father stood staring, as if his shoes were nailed to the floor, as if he were seeing a ghost.

One of the men yelled, “Hey, Vinny, are yiz in for this round or what?”

Vincent Flynn half turned. “I'm… out,” he stammered. He hadn't taken his eyes off Andy.

They stared at each other. “Come in, come in,” the cigarette man said at last, holding the door open for him to pass.

Except for his small size, Andy could see nothing of himself in this man who was supposed to be his father. Aunt Mona was right: there was very little resemblance. His father's eyes were pale blue, for one thing, not dark like Andy's and his mother's and Aunt Mona's. He had long, untidy ginger-brown hair with gray in it, and a tired, narrow face that needed a shave.

“Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!” called one of the players on the floor in a phony French accent.

Aware of his father's eyes greedily drinking him in, Andy shyly turned away and watched the game. One of the men inverted a mug in the center of the cigarette carton arena and shook the black insects out onto the floor. Long antennae probing the air ahead, they scuttled quickly for the darkness at the edges of the cigarette carton walls. The men whooped and cheered. “Show 'em the way, Gertrude!” yelled the fat man, Cassidy. “Move it, baby!” yelled a second man with a foreign accent. A third man, wearing a dirty khaki baseball cap with
Pumping Iron Gym, New York City
on the front in red and black, was speechless as he leaned over the arena wall, his eyes wobbling with excitement, and the fourth man, no teeth, only
bare gums, screeched loudly like an owl, “Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!”

The cockroaches crawled, wandered, scrambled to within an inch of the outer finishing circle, but in a sudden and most unusual move that astonished the onlookers, about-turned abruptly and sped back, side by side in a straight line, toward the center. On reaching the center, they turned again and crouched, perfectly still, antennae poised, as though awaiting a starter's gun.

“I never saw anything like it!” said Cassidy.

Like racehorses at the starting gate, the black insects suddenly exploded into life and made a direct sprint for the finish.

“Did you ever see such a thing?” screeched the toothless one.

“Black Beauty it is!” yelled the man in the baseball cap. He twisted around to look up. “Hey, Vinny! Did ye see that? I never saw the likes of it in all my life!”

Vincent Flynn stopped staring at Andy and turned to his friends. “Out, fellers! Game's over! All of yiz out!” He started snatching things up off the floor, pushing at the men, hurrying them. “Move it, boys!”

One of the men, the quiet one with the baseball cap, scooped the writhing insects up in his cupped hand and emptied them into a jam jar, capped it with a lid, and thrust the jar into his jacket pocket. Cassidy swigged back the dregs and dropped the empty bottle onto the sofa. The men grabbed their money and hurried to the door, stuffing bills and coins into their pockets. Cassidy stopped and
looked back. “Hey, Vinny! See you later at you-know-where, okay?” He gave a wink. The latch rattled as the door closed, and then there was silence.

Vincent Flynn said, “Andrew!”

“Andy.”

“Andy is it now? I can't believe it's you I'm looking at!”

There was that smile again, in a friendly, open face. This was the man who, according to his mother, was killed in the war, but who, according to Aunt Mona, had been kicked out by his mother when Andy was only five.

“Sit down, why don't you,” said his father — his dad — waving toward the sofa, “while I take a good look at you.”

Andy sat. His father started tidying up, throwing the cartons of cigarettes from the cockroach races onto the sofa, grabbing and snatching at litter, ashtrays, glasses, rushing them out to the tiny kitchen, moving quickly, smoothly.

Andy watching him, felt suddenly exhausted. He'd slept only a short time, two hours, maybe not that, in the broom closet.

When Vincent Flynn had finished tidying, he grasped the bottom of the window and jerked it open to let out the smoke. Then he sat on the arm of a shabby easy chair, facing Andy. “The bruises,” he said, peering closely at Andy's face, “are from the flood, then?”

Andy nodded. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but fatigue silenced him. Instead, he looked more closely at his father: he wore a plain green cotton shirt under a blue ribbed sweater, worn brown cords, and
a pair of shabby brown shoes. The sweater had food stains down the front. He looked again at his open face: pale watery blue eyes, smiling mouth; recalling the warm, welcoming voice, the accent so much like Aunt Mona's, he didn't find it hard to believe that this was the same voice of the Little People tales when he was little.

And yesterday he hadn't known his father was alive.