No offence Intended - Barbara Seranella (5 page)

Ducking between the two buildings, she picked her way
over trash, following the ten-foot-tall shrubbery separating the two
buildings. Halfway to the street, she crouched. The same
opening—their secret route—still existed. She slipped through it,
pushing aside damp white sheets that had been stretched across the
bushes to dry.

When she got to Sleaze's apartment, she knocked
first—softly' No one answered. She slipped the key in the lock and
opened the door. The apartment was small and dark, but she didn't
reach for the light switch. She stood very still. Her ears filled
with the sound of her own heart. She took deep breaths to calm
herself.

Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the lord my
soul to keep
.

The tiny kitchen, consisting of a sink, stove, and
battered refrigerator, stood at the other end of the room. The
closet-size bathroom lay to her right. She could hear the steady drip
of a leaking faucet from behind the room's closed door.

She righted a baby's car seat lying on its side and
picked up a rattle. The words DADDY'S GIRL were written on the pink
plastic face. She stuck the toy in her pocket and stepped closer to
the bathroom door. "Sleaze?" she called in an urgent
whisper, willing him to appear and aggravate her with that grin of
his.

No answer.

"John?" Please. Please be all right.

She didn't want to open the door, but just standing
there wasn't the answer, either. She put her ear to the door The
dripping was louder, maddeningly rhythmic, like Chinese water
torture. She imagined all sorts of horrors: slit veins and throats;
open mouths; a lifeless face staring up at her through inches of tub
water.

Shaking her head, she took a deep breath and reached
for the door handle.

And if I die before . .
. Stupid prayer

She put her hand on the knob. It twisted in her hand.

"Oh, fuck it," she said through clenched
teeth and pushed the door inward.

No one was in there, dead or alive. She laughed out
loud, relieved, embarrassed. The medicine cabinet hung open. It was
empty save for a box of Band-Aids and a jar of Vaseline. A box of
dried-out baby butt wipes lay open on the top of the toilet tank lid.
Inside the bathtub was a collection of infant float toys and a bottle
of Johnson No More Tears baby shampoo. The drains steel seat was
eroded from the constant drip of the leaking shower faucet. She
touched the side of the tub where perhaps he had leaned kneeling as
he washed his baby

But where was he now? And where was the baby? Which
neighbor?

She gathered Asia's car seat and the float toys and
took them out to her car. Returning to the building, she started
knocking on doors. The man who answered at Number 7 was dressed only
in a stained, threadbare white T-shirt and sagging briefs.

"I'm looking for a baby" she said. "Someone
around here is watching her for my friend."

He scratched himself and adjusted his balls before he
answered. "Huh?" He squinted, perhaps trying to remember
how to speak. ", uh . . . Whatcha doing here?"

"Never mind." She waved him back. "Sorry
to disturb you."

Grumbling, the man closed his door. No one answered
her knock at the next apartment over. She put her ear to the door.
The unit appeared to be unoccupied. When she knocked on the third
door, it rattled. She looked down and saw that the wood around the
doorknob was freshly splintered. Then she heard a baby crying.

She nudged the door open with her knee and stared
down the dark hallway where the crying seemed to be coming from.
"Hello?" She stepped inside. "Are you all right in
there?"

The baby screamed. Something about its tone alerted
her on some primal level. She rushed down the hall. Another scream.
The bedroom door hung half open and she knocked it out of her way

The naked couple on the bed were definitely dead.
Part of the man's skull was missing and most of the woman's nose.
There was nothing to be done for either of them.

The baby was lying in the corner, hemmed in by a
makeshift barrier of couch cushions and clutching an empty bottle.
Munch gathered the infant in her arms and saw that she was wearing
one of those baby ID bracelets on her wrist, the kind made up of tiny
blocks with letters on them. They spelled out "Garillo."

Asia stopped crying and stared at Munch. Munch stared
back, feeling a jolt of recognition as she gazed into the baby's
clear brown eyes—Sleaze's eyes. This could have been my baby she
thought, reeling. Asia blinked, then gathered her breath for another
howl.

"Shhh," Munch said. 'You're okay" Asia
smelled liked she needed changing. The front of her dress was wet
with drool.

"Let's get you out of here." She glanced
down at the dead couple and shook her head. This was not the time to
worry about them. She picked up the empty baby bottle and jammed it
into a large pink cloth bag full of other baby accessories that she
found on the floor. Clutching the baby to her chest, she ran back out
front, almost knocking down a Hispanic man. At first she thought he
was drunk, and then she realized that he was just terribly upset.

"I call the police," he said in heavily
accented English. A thin string of mucus dribbled unchecked from his
nose. "I cannot believe somebody would do this thing." He
buried his face in his hands and wept.

She patted his shoulder. "The cops will be here
soon," she said, hearing the chorus of approaching sirens.
"They'll know what to do."

He nodded and mumbled something she couldn't make
out. If she stayed, the cops would want answers from her. Answers
that she really didn't have. But that wasn't her main concern. She
knew they would take the baby and place her in protective services.
Sleaze would have a terrible time getting her back.

She left the man standing there and walked quickly
around the building, out of his sight, and then back through the
hedge with the baby clinging to her side. She threw the diaper bag
into the back seat, strapped Asia into the car seat, and ran around
to the driver's side.

When she started her car, she noticed that her hands
were shaking, and that surprised her. She had been about to
congratulate herself for staying so calm, but then she had always
excelled during crisis. Practice, she supposed. Swallowing the hot
saliva filling her mouth, she shifted the car into reverse. It kicked
backward with a protesting shriek as she floored the accelerator.
Asia's head jerked forward. Munch patted her leg and said, "Sorry
about that."

Asia opened her mouth and shrieked.

Three blocks later, Munch realized that Asia might be
hungry She pulled over at a liquor store and rummaged through the bag
of baby stuff. Clanking around in the bottom were two cans of
formula. She poked one open with her pocket knife, filled a clean
bottle, and handed it to Asia.

The baby sucked fiercely.

"How long were you all by your little self?"
Munch asked her, tucking a bib under the baby's chin and leaving
grease smudges on the white terry-cloth. And what was the connection
between the dead couple and Sleaze? People were always getting
themselves killed around Ghost Town and the Flats; maybe it was just
a full moon or something. Yeah, right.

Hopefully Lisa would be able to supply some answers.

Halfway to Inglewood, Munch's pulse had just about
returned to normal. Thank God, she thought, for little favors. If her
timing had been different, she might have been in the middle of a
shooting or sucked into a police investigation. What good would she
be to anyone dead or in jail?

A large jumbo jet passed overhead just as Munch
pulled up in front of Lisa Slokum's small wooden house on 96th
Street. The noise of the planes engine drowned out Janis Joplin
singing about how she once had a daddy who said he'd give her
anything in sight. Munch paused before switching off the ignition,
waiting for the next lines and anticipating the goose-bump-raising
thrill of Janis screaming out her lyrics. When the plane's noise
didn't subside, Munch closed her eyes and sang the words herself.
When she opened her eyes, Asia was staring at her.

A bare plot of earth fronted Lisa's house. The screen
covering the front window was ripped and the paint was peeling on the
shutters nailed permanently on either side. Two Big Wheels plastic
trikes were parked to the left of the walkway On the right, a child's
wading pool overflowed with beer cans. Munch locked her door and then
went around to the passenger side and lifted Asia out. With the baby
balanced on her hip, she let herself in the chain-link gate and
walked up the front path. The door was open, but the screen door was
shut.

There was no welcome mat.

"Hello?"

She heard a TV blasting. A door slammed inside the
house.

"Lisa?"

Munch waited for a moment, then opened the screen
door and called, "Hello?"

"What?"

"Can I come in?"

"It's open," Lisa yelled, sounding annoyed.
Munch stood in the doorway until her eyes adjusted to the interior
darkness. She saw Lisa, finally swaddled in blankets and lying on the
couch. Behind the sofa, in the corner, was a mattress partially
covered with skewed sheets. Munch pulled the screen door shut behind
her.

Lisa made no move to get up or lower the volume of
the television. It was a Happy Days rerun, Munch saw, the one where
the Fonz and Mrs. C. took dance lessons, and everyone thought they
were doing it.

"You can put her in the crib," Lisa said,
motioning with a languid gesture towards a cradle in the corner.

"That's all right," Munch said. "
don't mind holding her." She more than didn't mind. The baby fit
in the groove of her waist as if she'd been grown there. The warmth
of the baby carried through the fabric of Munch's shirt and settled
inside her chest.

"Shit," Lisa said, giving Munch a
once-over. "I haven't seen you in a long time."

"I've been working."

"You look different."

"So I'm told."

Lisa glanced back at the TV and chuckled at Richie
Cunningham's distress.

Munch perched on the arm of the couch, debating how
much to tell big-mouth Lisa about what she'd found at Sleaze's
apartment building.

"You heard about Karen, right?" Lisa said,
nodding at the baby

"I heard she died." Munch grabbed one of
Asia's feet between her thumb and forefinger and squeezed gently Asia
flexed her foot, curling her toes in response. Munch was seized with
an impulse to put those fat little toes in her mouth. One of Asia's
hands rested on Munch's cheek.

"Sleaze was the one who found her. The needle
was still in the bitch's arm."

"That's cold," Munch said. The baby grabbed
at the chrome tire gauge in Munch's pocket.

"He hasn't used since."

"Nothing?"

"No, he's been doing good. Just pills."

Munch nodded, remembering her old definition of
staying clean. Taking absolutely nothing had been a radical concept.

"Why'd they name her Asia?" she asked.

"She looked chinky when she was born," Lisa
said. "Big old fat cheeks and her eyes all squinted up."

"She's a little heartbreaker now."

"Easy to say when you're not cleaning up after
her all day"

"Do you watch her much?"

"Too much. You bring any of her shit?"

Munch held up the pink bag. "Just this."

"I'm all out of clothes for her. Sleaze said
you'd bring more. He, as usual, flaked out."

Munch looked past the living room doorway into the
kitchen. There was a washing machine next to the sink; clothes were
piled in front of it. "Do you want me to help you do some
laundry?" she asked.

Lisa sighed. "This is what I'm saying. I got
enough to do with two kids of my own without minding his little
rugrat."

"Where are your kids?"

"They're around here somewhere."

Munch laid the baby down in the crib. "Can I use
your bathroom?"

"Help yourself," Lisa said.

Munch decided that was how most things were done in
this household as she walked clown the darkened hallway to the
bathroom. She had to skirt an industrial stainless steel sink leaning
on its side against the hallway wall. "What's with the sink?"
she yelled to Lisa.

"I'm going to put it in the bathroom. The one in
there is cracked and the landlord won't do shit."

“
You want some help with it?" Munch asked.
"Maybe between the two of us we can hook it up."

"No," Lisa said. " wasn't planning on
dealing with that today"

Munch stepped over the sink into the bathroom.
Mismatched towels hung haphazardly from the cracked shower door. A
pair of Lisa's panties were on the floor by the toilet, looking as if
she had just let them lie where they dropped. The sink was full of
hair and the mirror above it had lost most of its silver backing.
Munch peed without sitting down, then discovered there was no toilet
paper. She ripped a page from the magazine sitting on back of the
tank when she surmised from its other missing pages that this was its
intended use. She then grabbed the cleanest towel she could find and
dampened it with warm water from the bathtub faucet.