Randy Highsmith’s California dream came crashing down around his ears like a house of cards under strobe lighting. It all fell apart in bitter moment on a ninety-three-degree, Wednesday morning on Santiago Street when he found two homeless people squabbling over drugs and a scruffy, bearded old man peeing on the plate-glass window he’d just had installed the day before.
Randy looked at the arc of the yellow urine stream in utter despair. The fancy lettering in Victorian Old English font mocked his dream. The homeless man swiveled his neck around and barked, “What’re you lookin’ at?” before returning to relieving himself, making up and down motions as though writing his name in herky-jerky font. The two drug fiends, a man and woman in their thirties, although it was hard to tell age in their cavernous, begrimed faces, continued arguing over the needle they were sharing.
Last week’s grand opening, with TEN FREE YOGA MATS, as shouted by his flyer, had been a miserable failure. A total of thirteen people stopped by over a twelve-hour period to check his place out. Only two looked like yoga prospects, but neither young woman wanted to put her name down or provide an email address for his “newsletter,” which was a ruse to build up a clientele.
He didn’t have to play the messages to know that his landlord was calling about the overdue down payment he’d promised her—or check his emails to know that more than half were from suppliers and contractors.
Across the middle of the country he drove non-stop, sleeping in rest stops, washing off the itchy stink of his own body odor in highway restrooms; he lived off sugary snacks and energy drinks from the vending machines. Each mile that brought him closer to Northtown increased his anxiety until he reached the outer belt of Columbus for the three-hour drive north to his small, rust-belt town on Lake Erie. Those last few hundred miles home in the fading light played tricks with his exhausted mind and bleary vision.
It turned out that his fantasy of a joyous return was just that—a fantasy as deceptive as a highway mirage. His parents were subdued in their response at seeing him, although they did stand in the foyer. They just didn’t say much. Mostly they stared at him with stony expressions as he waited to be invited inside with his duffel bag. Randy guessed he’d just experienced one of the shortest “Welcome back, son” embraces in the history of familial homecomings. His mother said, “Well, you can’t have your old room. I’m using it for a sewing room now.”
By the end of his third day at home, the casual remark “Find a job yet?” had become a clarion call for action, an incessant refrain to any comment not attached to the weather or sports.
That night, as they settled in to watch their mindless TV programs, he passed by the living room dressed in his only pair of good slacks and shirt, the ones he wore clubbing.
“Where are you going?”
They both asked at the same time, his mother a beat behind his father’s gruff question.
“I’m going out,” Randy replied.
“What time are you coming back?”
Jesus Christ, like I’m fuckin’ seventeen . . . The thought shot across his neocortex like a missile, but he swallowed and spoke politely: “Donnie Mastock wants to meet up. I’ll be back around midnight.”
“I thought he got married and left town,” his father called out from his Z-Boy. “That’s what your mother told me.”
“Divorced,” Randy said, the word almost choking in his esophagus. “He’s back in town.”
Like me, a loser.
“The dog returneth to his vomit,” his mother quoted, eyeing him askance, exactly as she used to when he came home drunk from a night out partying with friends.
“Your Mom and me,’ his father said; “we don’t like leaving the door open. Town’s full of hooligans nowadays.”
Hooligans . . . Jesus save me—
Randy stood there, a boiling wrath surging up his entire body. He blinked. His mind went utterly blank despite years of power yoga practiced and taught. His chi shriveled and burned away like switchgrass in a hillside wildfire; his chakras did a banging tango against each other like drunks dancing to a Bavarian oompah band.
“Then lock the goddamned door! I’ll climb through the window!”
“Randy!” His name gasped aloud in unison by his parents wasn’t as satisfying as the sound of the door slamming behind him. But he knew beyond any doubt that he was on borrowed time, probably days if not hours from that moment henceforth.
Randy wasn’t meeting Donnie. He hadn’t seen Donnie since they double-dated and parked at Point Park overlooking Northtown’s harbor.
He went to the same diner where he once washed dishes for minimum wage in high school. He was on his third cup of watery coffee when Peter Rasmussen came in with his date. Heads in the booths swiveled to take in the blonde beside him. Peter was the hometown football hero and class president. Randy knew he was in for a dose of humiliation if recognized.
“Highsmith? Randy Highsmith?”
Shit, piss, fuck me—
“Peter! Long time no see.”
“Back in town, Randy?”
“For a week or so,” Randy replied, working up something plausible to say.
“Come join us.”
That wasn’t expected.
“This is Dani. Dani, this is Randy Highsmith. We went to the same high school.”
Dani giggled at him. “That’s an odd name.”
“Not my choice,” Randy replied, unable not to smile at her.
It turned out Dani was a yoga fanatic. She’d even gone to a resort and spa in Thailand to work with a celebrated yogini. Peter looked bored with all the yoga talk going on between them. Randy suspected he liked what the power yoga did for his girlfriend’s physique. He just didn’t care how it was accomplished much like the way people enjoy breakfast sausage without wanting to know how it’s made.
“What is your favorite pose, Randy?”
He made it an inside joke of it that went over Rasmussen’s head. The one at the end of class, which is simply lying down, breathing calmly.
“Please, you two,” Petey said. “No more talk about asanas or assholes, whatever it is.”
She giggled, asked Randy: “Why’d you leave Cali?”
He lied and said he’d missed his parents.
Then: a miracle. Right from her lips to his ears. Her parents owned a yoga place and needed an experienced instructor right away.
“I’d love—like to talk to them about that possibility.”
Dani wrote her number on a napkin and passed it across the table to him.
The diner maintained a fifties’ décor with checkerboard designs, Elvis and James Dean posters, chrome stools, and the old-fashioned tabletop diner jukeboxes. Ernest Tubbs’ “Waltz across Texas” started playing over the sound system.
“Finish your coffee, babe,” he said. “Shitkicker time. Let’s get out of here before one of those hillbillies at the counter asks you to dance.”
When Randy worked at the diner, the song that put his teeth on edge was Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” a favorite of the fogies reeling out of bars on Bridge Street.”
Watching her walk away with her boyfriend, Randy thought of an old Marilyn Monroe video he used to get from the public library. He didn’t care about the movie, some crime drama. It was watching Monroe’s peach-shaped behind walking away from the camera that interested him.
***
Randy was determined to make a good impression on Dani’s father. The house was a massive place centered within a four-acre spread of putting-length Bermuda grass and manicured shrubbery.
Dani’s father laughed, telling him about the freebie class he sponsored at the nursing home. He mentioned one old woman who continually passed gas in class.
“Anything like that ever happen to you, Randy?”
I had a bum piss on my front window a few days ago, he thought.
“No, sir,” he replied. “I’ve been fortunate.”
He had the job, and the pay was generous. The only drawback to his full slate of classes was that he had to include a tai chi class for some old folks at the nursing home. Dani’s old man was a lawyer with big political ambitions. He did pro bono work for his profession and tossed in a freebie tai chi or yoga once in a while by offering up his yoga instructor’s services. He always made sure the local Herald-Tribune did a nice publicity spread with photos whenever he did.
His yoga classes were a dream come true—exactly what he’d hoped for in California. The fact that it was happening right in his hometown was another blow to his ego. He had some talented students, many experienced, and a couple who could have been instructors themselves. He loved being challenged and working with classes that could do more than the Lion Pose and Downward Dog.
He dreaded the first class at the county nursing home, however. Ever since his teenage years, Randy avoided two places: hospitals and nursing homes. They both gave him the heebie-jeebies. The former because it had dead people somewhere on the premises. The latter because it had dying people and a pungent smell, a hybrid of chicken noodle soup and a rubbery skunk smell. He thought of that dirty, bearded old man back in California like some kind of deranged Old Testament prophet.
When he drove to the facility on West Avenue to introduce himself the following day, he discovered a weather-stained cardboard sign on the door of a shuttered, graffiti-slathered building, stating its gleeful message: “Hurrah, We’re Finally At Our New Location!” No new address was listed.
He backtracked twice on Route 84 before he found it. The sign was modest, decorative, belying its purpose as a warehouse for the mentally incompetent castoffs of society. An artist had done a tasteful burnt wood carving of the lettering, easy to miss if you weren’t looking for it: “Northtown County Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center.”
Randy swung his Civic left onto the gravel driveway, thinking that sign was putting lipstick on a pig.
“Well, here we go,” he said, pulling up front and parking. The parking must be around back, but he didn’t plan to stay long. Just introduce himself, find out the time of the class, maybe get a list of the elderly planning to take it, and skedaddle back.
For a new place, Randy thought the maintenance people were remiss. Wind-blown debris from the grounds and highway had blown up against the steps and were stuck in the shrubbery on either side of the main entrance. Some of it, the food wrappers, looked aged and tattered.
The double doors to the home weren’t much better—grimy and dirt-smeared.
He felt sorry for the old folks inside that staff weren’t on their toes when it came to ordinary housekeeping chores.
The interior was dim. Saving on the light bill, too, he thought. Cheapskates. He wondered exactly how much goodwill Dani’s father generated in a place like this.
Dried tan mud in the shape of shoe prints tracked across the carpeting, making a child’s sketchy Y. The smaller branch bent toward the curved lobby desk; the other disappeared down a first-floor hallway. Photos of well-groomed big shots lined one wall, a homage to wealthy donors. No one seemed to be visible up front to register visitors or check who was entering. He dreaded the thought of having to go search for someone.
An older man in a navy-blue business suit stepped out of the shadows of the hallway to approach him.
They can’t pay the light bill but they can afford to pay a Walmart greeter, Randy thought, mentally preparing himself to smile back.
The man had a crooked smile on his cherry-pink face that reminded him of the salesman at Kudus’ Used Cars where bought his first vehicle, a patched-up, lime green Saturn he could never find parts for.
“Hello, welcome,” the man said and offered his hand. “Name’s Richard Norton. Call me Rich.”
“Hello, Rich.”
“Which of our guests are you here to see, if I may ask?”
Belying the formality of his speech, Randy noticed immediately the unhealthy pallor of the man’s face and his suit coat. It gave him a Tweedledee appearance; his shirt cuffs were frayed and his shoes scuffed. The thin ribbon of tie, the end of which crinkled up on his belly like a snake poking its head up from the rock it was sunning itself on.
Nothing Randy saw out of the corner of his eye dispelled the depressed feeling that washed over him. The nap of the carpeting was worn where it wasn’t tracked. He detected some kind of gray and green triangle design embedded in the mosaic pattern. He was used to California’s shabby chic, not this discounted Ohio version, which reeked of hard times and corners cut.
The man nattered on excitedly about the tai chi class Randy was going to teach “the guests.”
“Our ladies and gentlemen can’t wait to meet you,” he gushed, rubbing his hands like some movie villain.
“I was hoping to meet your director to discuss the time and place,” Randy told the man.
He looked affronted.
“That’s why I’m here. That’s my job,” Rich said.
“May I have a look at the room we’ll be using?”
“Of course!”
He led the way down a second corridor to the end of the hallway. Randy tried holding his breath, knowing the rooms they were passing held the occupants and those rooms came with rancid smells. He trailed the weird little man to a large room at the end of the corridor.
“It’s big enough,” Randy said.
In fact, the room was entirely bare. Chairs had been stacked against the walls.
“This is our conference room,” Richard said, springing ahead to the front of the room as though he were about to begin a PowerPoint presentation.
“How many will be in the class?”
Richard struck a thoughtful pose, like something an old-time vaudeville actor might have done on stage.
“You’ve got me there, kiddo,” Rich finally said, breaking the spell. “I have no idea.”
“Can you find out?”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, young man,” he said, suddenly all touchy-feely, grabbing at Randy’s arm and hugging it to his chest. “I guarantee you, by this time at seven in the p.m. tomorrow night, you’ll have standing room only.”
He gave Randy’s hand a firm, wet squeeze, and turned him around toward the door.
“Sorry, duty calls. I have a dozen other things to attend to—appointments, meetings, people to see, you know, that kind of thing.”
“What about some of the . . . guests? Maybe I could drum up a little business for myself?”
“Good heavens, no! This is their sacred nap time. You should have called ahead.”
He led Randy back the way they’d come down the darkened hallway, almost bumrushing him toward the exit. The bank of fluorescent lights blinked on and off.
Seeing Randy cast an eye at the malfunction, Norton said, “Mister Gifford’s our custodian. He’s a bit tardy with his tasks at times, but oh, our guests just love him! He tells the best puns, you know. Do you appreciate a good fruit joke, Randy?”
“What?”
“Then you need to let that mango. Get it? Man-go.”
Randy was stunned into silence by the man’s buffoonery. Once in his Civic driving back up the driveway past the sign, he uttered an exasperated, “What the fucking fuck was that” to his image in the rearview.
By the time he got back to Northtown, he had put the whole bizarre episode out of his mind. He had another class to teach and he couldn’t walk in there discomfited by that pompous fool at the nursing home. He practiced deep breathing and his best peng moves to ward off the negative force he encountered at the home, exhaling to unblock the stagnant chi until it left his body like so much dirty dishwater.
Tuesday night, Randy showed up early, hoping he could slip past Richard Norton and his grubby suit to get his class underway before he was discovered in the building. Wary of alerting him to his presence, Randy decided to bypass the lobby desk and head right to his appointed room. Even a cretin like Norton should know better than to interrupt a class in progress.
He heard voices inside. Opening it, he was surprised to see a dozen residents already there, happily chatting away, anticipating the new tai chi teacher.
“What a pleasant surprise,” he said. “Greetings to you all.”
Randy introduced himself, spoke of his credentials very briefly, and told them he’d introduce them to some simple moves in tai chi and what benefits they could expect from taking his class.
“Please help yourself to one of the chairs before we begin,” he said and began assisting some of the frailer ones with chairs. About half the residents chose them.
“Now, then,” he said. “Before we begin, I want to talk to you a bit before we begin. I promise not to bore you but there are a few terms we need to know. First, there’s chi, your ‘life energy.’ Another is meridians or energy pathways. Your dan tien is located between your navel and your pubic bone”—a few simpering yuks there—“which contains a huge storehouse of your body’s energy . . .”
A good sign, he thought. No one’s eyes glazed over yet.
He went on: “I’ll show you some moves to acquaint you with tai chi. I’ll start with some simple moves we’ll be doing, and then show you some more complicated moves, that—I promise you—we won’t be doing. That is, not until you’re begging me to show you.”
He meant it as a joke, but they seemed to be taking him with utmost seriousness.
Randy went through a half-dozen simple katas, calling each one out by name.
He had them perform each one three times. Randy watched as they went through their motions, more or less on cue. Not exactly Cirque Du Soleil but decent for these oldsters . . .
“Now, I want to show you a couple more elaborate ones we’ll be doing, such as “Part the Horse’s Mane on Both Sides” and “White Crane Spreads Its Wings.”
Class over, it occurred to him he should make a courtesy call on the man, even though he simultaneously loathed the thought. He didn’t want him to turn officious, as he suspected the man was capable of, and undo the good start he’d made without his assistance.
He figured he’d check the front desk.
Again, no office personnel behind it. He swiped his finger along the counter: dust.
Things were looking up: he had an apartment in the harbor overlooking part of the Northtown River and Bridge Street, the only street with any night life. His old skills as a bartender in West Hollywood clubs came in handy. To make ends meet, he took a job in the one college bar and pizza parlor next door to a private investigator’s office at the corner of Hulbert and Bridge.
Two weeks after his return, he saw a man enter the private eye’s office. On a whim, Randy followed him inside.
“I don’t know how to begin,” Randy started. “I don’t have the money to pay you—not right away anyhow. I’m just getting back on my feet.”
“Have a seat,” the man said. His name was Raimo Jarvi, a common Finnish name from the harbor. He went by Ray, he said. “As the King said in Alice in Wonderland, begin at the beginning. I don’t charge to talk. Tell me what you have in mind.”
“It’s the old folks home,” Randy said. “I’ve been teaching a tai chi class to the residents out there for six weeks now. Every Tuesday night at seven.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Every time I go into the building, it’s a . . . disgrace,” Randy replied. “It’s filthy. I mean the place isn’t clean, nothing’s fixed. The fluorescent lights in the hall don’t work. It’s dark in the place when I go in and dark when I leave. They use emergency lighting at night—you know, when the power goes out and the generator kicks in. I feel sorry for those people.”
“I’m surprised to hear that,” Ray said. “It’s a brand-new building. They just closed the old home not long ago.”
“I’ve been gone a few years,” Randy said. “But I remember how this town does things—used to do things.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Pay a visit out there. That’s all. See it for yourself. Write up what you see. I’ll pay for it.”
“Is there a reason why you can’t?”
“I owe my job to a man who is a benefactor of the place. He carries clout in Northtown. If I make a ruckus, it’s like I’m biting the hand that feeds me. I know it sounds chickenshit to do it this way, but with an objective person confirming my impressions, maybe the city council will get off its ass and do something about it.”
“Are the people being mistreated out there?”
“Oh no, no. They seem happy. Some are good for their age. But I can’t stand knowing they’re being neglected by people paid to take care of them. There’s a pompous jerk out there, the recreational activities director. He doesn’t have a clue.”
“I’ll look into it. Give me a few days.”
“Do you want me to sign a contract?”
“You mean like TV gumshoes and their clients?”
“Something like that.”
They shook hands again at the door.
That put Randy’s mind at ease. He didn’t think a private eye in Northtown had many jobs until he remembered he was seeing another man’s wife he’d met in the bar he tended. Plenty of work for a motel window peeper if only a fraction of the people he overheard at the bar was any sign. Swingers, pan-sexuals, bisexuals—everyone horny as goats. Marriage, unless an open one, was a dirty word. Even California wasn’t this bad.
Three days went by before Randy saw Ray Jarvi entering his office.
“Come on in, Randy,” Jarvi said. “Take a seat.”
“I went out to the nursing home. I made up a story about my ailing grandmother needing assisted living. They gave me the grand tour. The place is clean. I mean, eat-off-the-floors clean. I took photos with a pinhole camera. Take a look for yourself.”
Ray shoved a manila file folder across his desk.
Randy opened it and saw the glossies.
“My spy camera’s expensive,” Ray said. “And it’s good. You see any bokeh?”
“Any what?”
“Background blur. The foreground and background images are clear. I spoke to six of the residents, some as long as twenty minutes. They gave me free access without leaving me entirely alone. No coercion on the residents to hand me a spiel. I checked residents’ rooms, the kitchen, custodial quarters, spoke to the hourly staff, the RN on duty, two LPNs, and the driver who takes them around the county on day trips. The place is also well-lit from top to bottom. I came back at night for a follow-up visit. Different staff, the same friendly treatment. Nobody held back. Nothing to be suspicious about.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“There’s one more thing, Randy. Two more things, actually. Both disturbing.”
Randy looked up. Ray’s face was still pleasant despite the scars, but the eyes had narrowed.
He said: “There’s no one out there by the name Richard Norton. There’s no tai chi class. No one knows you by name.”
Randy felt like somebody hit him with a fist in the solar plexus.
“I—I don’t believe it,” he muttered.
“Come with me,” Jarvi said and stood up.
“Where?”
For a split-second, Randy thought he meant the police station.
“We should go for a drive to the nursing home,” Jarvi replied. “You need to put your mind at rest.”
They took a left at Walnut Beach Hill instead of a right turn east.
“Where are you going? The nursing home’s the other way.”
“The new nursing home is at the intersection of Lake and Route Forty-Five. We’re just a couple minutes away.”
“I’m talking about the nursing home on Route Eighty-Four. Why aren’t we driving out there?”
“Because it’s closed. I assumed you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Three residents were murdered in their rooms by a disgruntled employee shortly after the move from the old West Avenue place. He was let go for sleeping on the job. He came back to clean out his locker and went from room to room strangling them in their beds with a homemade garrote. He killed three and severely injured nine more. One’s still on life support. One recovered fully, but she’s since suffered debilitating strokes. Three remain in a vegetative state.”
“Jesus H. Christ.”
They were silent the rest of the way out there. Jarvi pulled into the old nursing home and followed the gravel driveway to the entrance just as Randy said he had done the previous two Tuesdays.
“Wait here,” he said, leaning toward the window. “I have a set of lockpicks in my trunk.”
“You won’t need them,” Randy replied, his eyes staring through the windshield but not focusing.
Twenty minutes passed, Randy couldn’t wait any longer. He exited the car and went up the steps as he had done for weeks, only now in daylight.
No Ray Jarvi anywhere; the same empty front desk. He walked down the corridor to his yoga room. Voices inside, the familiar, pleasant gabble of old people chatting among themselves. The nape of his neck prickled with tension as he pushed the door open.
The private investigator lay crumpled on the floor surrounded by the old people from his class looking on.
“Jarvi!” Randy gasped, shocked.
He pushed through the crowd, bent down to check the private investigator. His carotid pulse ticked beneath his fingertips, but one side of Jarvi’s head was matted with matted blood.
Randy shifted his gaze to the old folks crowding around him for a better look and demanded to know what had happened.
Short, fat Richard Norton split them apart like a bow wave with a crowbar in his hand and swung it at the crown of Randy’s head, missing by inches but shattering his right clavicle.
Stunned, Randy rolled instinctively away from the next blow and slammed into the legs and knees of the onlookers before Norton’s crowbar struck. In the melee of bodies tumbling in his wake, he was able to get to his feet and stumble toward the door with Norton on his heels.
Unable to catch the younger, stronger man, Norton heaved the crowbar in pursuit, again missing Randy’s head by inches. Fleeing down the driveway, he ducked behind the sign to make the Nine-One-One call and wait for the police.
Thinking of Jarvi at the mercy of Norton’s crowbar, Randy mentally lashed a stick to his spine and tore back down the driveway, looking from side to side for anything he might use as a weapon.
He made his way back to the yoga room with a large stick and found the old people still there with loony smiles on their faces and Jarvi sitting upright holding a wadded cloth to his head to stanch the blood.
“Are you OK? Where’s Norton? Where’s Norton!” Randy babbled the words together, his head on a swivel for Norton’s return.
They heard the doppler effect of cop cruisers running hot with lights and sirens coming fast down the highway toward them.
The old people milled around aimlessly, most smiling vaguely, a few wandering out into the hallway.
***
Two weeks later, Randy sat in Ray Jarvi’s office looking at his bill.
“What’s this for?”
“For running off,” Jarvi said.
“What?”
“A joke, never mind,” Jarvi said. “It’s my medical bill’s estimate of my share of the costs for the ambulance ride and the stitches. My insurance covered the rest.”
Randy saw the Herald-Tribune lying open on the private eye’s desk. He didn’t need to read it. He almost had it memorized. It was so grotesque a story Northtown would be buzzing over it for years.
Randy shook his head in disbelief, reliving part of it. The strangler of those residents had been the janitor Gifford. Norton was fired after the murders for failing to report Gifford’s presence on the premises after his termination. Norton never made the move to the facility on Route 45 with the rest of the staff. And he never turned in his keys. Cops found him hanging by his belt in the showers of one of the resident’s rooms where he’d been squatting for weeks.
“What’s wrong?” asked Jarvi. “Someone walk over your grave?”
“I was thinking of Norton running around that empty facility in his shabby suit playing host.”
“He was a better salesman than a recreation director, apparently. He talked a dozen families into letting him take their relatives on ‘field trips’ for your tai chi class once you stumbled into the place.”
“‘Stumbled’ doesn’t half get it.”
“All that yoga paid off, Highsmith. I wasn’t nimble enough to get out of the way when he came up to me with that phony smile and coldcocked me from behind with it.”
“Take something off this bill,” Randy said, “and you can take our classes for free.”
“Our classes?”
“I’m not so nimble with this thing,” Randy said, referring to his shoulder brace. “But you’ve already mastered one pose that saved your life.”
“Which one is that?”
He thought of the evening he met Dani in the diner, their yoga talk that irritated her boyfriend, now her ex, he was most pleased to recall. “We call it the ‘corpse pose.’”
[Image Credit : Photo by Rasmus Smedstrup Mortensen on Unsplash ]
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