Dallas Noir Read online

  Anders was in sales, at Dell computers. He didn’t know shit about computers, hated sales, and his job remained foreign and separate, like some bizarre cultural ritual he performed daily without any knowledge of why it was done. He wrote this off as something that was a matter of course, and that it was best not to get too involved in one’s vocation. What he did for a living didn’t define him; rather, he was a slightly flabbier version of the man he was in college, the vortex of the party, always in the throes of whatever action, with Megan as his running partner. He had other dreams and he was bound to realize them. He was the hole-man. Everything went through him.

  But moving to Dallas a few years ago when Megan got her nursing job called this extroverted notion of themselves into serious question. They hadn’t met anyone in the neighborhood other than the androgynous lunatic of indeterminate age who lived next door, and the university literature professor down the block with his strangely beautiful trophy wife, who both seemed to do little more than drink gin cocktails by their pool and grouse about how Austin had a much better “literary scene.” Anders believed it was the simple arrangement and logistics of the neighborhood that was responsible: because all the garages faced the back alley and everyone had privacy fences, people entered and exited their houses by their concealed back entrances. No children playing in the front yards, no gatherings of adults meeting by chance on pleasant afternoons. Anders was convinced that many of the people in his neighborhood had no idea what the lawn crews were doing with their topiary or hedging because they’d never even seen their own front yards.

  Later that afternoon the doorbell boomed as Anders was having a beer and watching SportsCenter. Blake was napping, and the girl had the sleeping habits of a paranoid bloodhound. The slightest sound, movement of air particles, or change in barometric pressure and she’d spring up and seize the bars on the crib, loosing a soaring shriek that would ring in your ears for the rest of the day. Megan was on the computer in the kitchen and when the doorbell went off they both looked at each other with real anguish, as if they were on separating ice floes. They had a note taped over the doorbell button that read: Please Knock Softly, Sleeping Baby. Anders and Megan gesticulated at each other in frantic pantomime: Who the hell rings the goddamn doorbell like that? Anders sprang up and raced to the door, but as he grasped the knob it went off again, answered down the hall by Blake, the timbre of victory in her voice.

  Anders flung open the door to find a short Mexican man in clean jeans and cowboy hat standing on the porch. A small group of men stood in the front yard. At the curb an enormous Dodge pickup, the kind favored by work crew foremen, idled with a throaty rumble.

  Good afternoon, sir. My name is Salvador.

  He smiled and bowed slightly, proffering a card.

  Anders looked at the note covering the doorbell, then back at Salvador. He had a belt buckle the size of a small dinner plate in the shape of Texas.

  I am asking, Salvador said, if you have some trouble with your roof.

  Anders blinked. The men in the yard looked elsewhere, sweating in the shade of the oak tree. They weren’t dressed like a normal work crew. These guys had pressed shirts and fancy cowboy boots like something a Texas congressman might wear. Behind him Blake’s shriek had warbled into an approximation of a rebel yell.

  My roof?

  Yes sir. You been up on your roof, yes? Is there something wrong? We are expert roofers. Insured and licenses, we do all the roofs around here.

  He held out the card again. Anders took it. It simply said Salvador and had a phone number on it.

  I don’t think so, Anders said. I mean, no, there isn’t anything wrong with the roof.

  Salvador shrugged.

  Then perhaps, he said, you should stay off it, eh?

  He pointed up, still smiling.

  Is dangerous up there, you understand?

  Anders nodded.

  * * *

  In the evening Anders sat on the patio drinking whiskey, his skin polished with a layer of deet. Inside Megan did a yoga DVD, her arms folded behind her head like a Hindu goddess. The even, stentorian breathing of Blake was audible on the baby monitor in the kitchen. Overhead jets droned invisibly, lining up for the pattern into DFW. All through his young life Anders was a social animal of the first order, and so he was completely unequipped to handle the developments of the last couple years. It felt as if his life was telescoping away from him, disappearing from view as night fell on the world outside this tight bubble of responsibility.

  It took about a year of living in Dallas to really hit him. It was the early spring and Anders had been in the pool alone on a Saturday afternoon, Blake and Megan napping. The water was a cool seventy degrees and the mosquitoes had yet to issue forth from whatever underground lair they hibernated in. Anders read somewhere that the ancient Egyptians believed that insect life was created spontaneously from the effect of the sun on the muddy banks of the Nile. This bit of extrapolation made complete sense to Anders. How did they survive the winter, when Dallas might have a foot of snow, a couple weeks of freezing temperatures? How deep in the soil did the larvae and eggs have to be planted to stay alive? Anders was thinking about all these things as he treaded water in the deep end, unconsciously putting up his hands to work on his leg strength, an old drill from his water polo days, when he suddenly became aware of his loneliness. Surely, on a day like this, in a pool like this, and people like himself and Megan . . . he didn’t know how to finish this thought. Anders paddled to the shallow end and stood, hands on his hips. The wooden privacy fence gave the impression of a bowl that opened up onto clear, empty sky. The casual, muted sounds of occasional birds, the distant deep whoosh of the freeway. The dull thump and whack of work crews, roofers. He tried to picture the interior lives of these houses, these small brick-and-mortar capsules of life. There would be people inside, going on about the business of dreaming and living. But doing what, he couldn’t imagine. It was blank. He was just over thirty years old.

  * * *

  On Monday Anders called the Dallas Public Works Department to notify them about the house across the alley.

  I can see them right now, a literal cloud of mosquitoes.

  I understand, sir.

  Saturday there were about five of them on my daughter’s face. We just walked outside. And with the West Nile Virus epidemic . . .

  We will send someone over to check it out.

  I think there is something strange going on over there. At this house.

  What do you mean, sir?

  Well.

  What’s strange?

  I just think someone needs to take a look.

  * * *

  Blake struggled in her long pants and long-sleeved shirt, but after a block she collapsed, her head lolling at those amazing angles that only a toddler can endure, her face shining beneath the sun shade. Anders wanted to get a look at the front of the house across the alley, so he decided he’d take Blake out for a walk in the stroller. If they could hack the heat maybe they’d go the mile to the “lake,” as it was called in Dallas parlance, which in reality was a runoff cesspool and duckshit depository. A narrow grass park surrounded the lake and each heavy rain left a thick watermark of cans, bottles, packaging, and plastic grocery bags. The members of a boat club bravely raced one-man dinghies on the weekends around the circuit of the lake, their zeal for victory moderated by the potential horror of capsizing into the murk. The turtles that rose to the surface to accept bread crumbs were the size of manhole covers, their backs carpets of lush algae, their soft exposed necks festooned with pale leeches. In the evening the surface of the lake roiled with the froth of mutant life, larvae, distended, globular fish, tadpoles that never fully transitioned into frogs.

  But it was too hot for more than just a few blocks. The wide cement road was hazy with heat flares, the lawns down the road distorted and shimmering like oil on water, lifeless. Megan swore that a pair of young twins lived across the street, but Anders couldn’t believe it. How coul
d two young boys, subteen boys, live in a house and never play in the front yard, never swagger down the street on aggressive bikes, never make a yelp or holler, never clip a ball onto the roof, never climb a fucking tree? Two cars idled farther along, one an aging Hyundai compact that pulled away only to glide to the curb a few houses later. The flat lines of the roofs, all with girt-garnet asphalt shingles. The hedges had the same flat-edged look, sharp corners, heavy lines. The landscaping of Frank Lloyd Wright. The next block was the same again, this time two cars and a pickup, idling, tinted windows, pausing and drifting away as he drew near, like scuttling cockroaches on the kitchen counter.

  The front of the house was dormant, heavy drapes pulled and the front stoop littered with leaves and lawn debris. The yard was black dirt with the occasional bunch of crabgrass and about a dozen ancient copies of the Dallas Morning News moldering in plastic bags cloudy with condensation. Nothing moved. Blake moaned and shifted, her face slick with sweat, so Anders turned back.

  * * *

  When nothing happened he called back on Wednesday.

  I just wanted to check if someone went by there. This house I reported.

  I’m afraid I cannot tell you that, sir.

  What can you tell me?

  I can tell you that the complaint was filed and acted upon.

  What does acted upon mean?

  I don’t know, sir, but we have it here as resolved.

  How is it resolved? The pool still has water in it. The mosquitoes are still horrendous. I can see them streaming over the fence.

  Sir—

  They are biting my daughter, my wife! You are aware of the West Nile problem?

  I’m sorry, sir, but the file says it is resolved.

  Well, can I report it again?

  I’m afraid that wouldn’t do any good.

  What? Why?

  Have a good day, sir. Goodbye.

  * * *

  Thursday evening Anders put his foot in his pool. Warm, like a vat of fresh urine. He thought about jumping in but he felt a bit sick, like he was coming down with something. The light under the diving board illuminated the sculpted cement bottom with patented Pebble Tec surfacing, six parts deep blue, two parts aquamarine. Anders had it done when they moved in and the color was perfect. To him it looked like the blue of a whale’s eye in the deep valleys of the Pacific. He swatted away a mosquito trying to land on his lips. Anders had already weathered painful bites on his eyelid, between his toes, his inner ear. He gripped his drink and, staring at the limpid face of his pool, began to recount all the bad decisions he had made in his life.

  Sometimes at night Anders heard the faint muttering of lips, the working mouths of the strangers who surrounded him, whispering in their sleep. Or not whispering; more like weeping. The yawning jaws and stifled sobs of men and women weeping in their catacomb beds, lying like sewing needles under the coverlet, the shuddering sigh and gasp of ragged sorrow. He didn’t know if he was dreaming or awake. The city wept. Nothing mattered. Nobody mattered.

  He felt a sharp pain like someone was pushing a thumbtack into the back of his neck, and when he slapped at it his hand came away with a splotch of blood the size of a quarter. That was somebody else’s blood, he thought, someone else out here in the neighborhood. The notion made him feel dizzy with a kind of unwanted intimacy. He wiped his sweaty face. The feverish quality of the dreams and his general distorted sense of waking life worried him. He hadn’t felt well lately, not at all.

  Later that night, after a few more whiskeys, Anders crouched on the peak of the roof weighing in his hand the “mosquito bomb” that he’d picked up at the hardware store. It was about the size of a golf ball, designed for large bodies of water, up to a hundred thousand gallons. The tricky part was lobbing it in there. It was only about twenty yards across the alley, but the mosquito bomb was light. He would really have to whip it. If he missed he had two more. Even at night, the heat was punishing on the roof, his shirt soaked down the back and his feet slipping in his flip-flops. He rose up and launched one. He could tell immediately the trajectory was no good, too high, and it fell just over the fence, short of the pool.

  Anders fished the second bomb out of his pocket and gave it the full arm and overshot the pool, the mosquito bomb hitting the dusty sliding glass back door with a solid pock. The door looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, so he fished out the third bomb and dropped it neatly into the green muck, dead center.

  He was crabbing down the roof to the side fence when the sliding door was flung open and a young man stepped out, a flabby twentysomething white guy in a black T-shirt and wearing some kind of wool hat. He looked around the backyard and pool with a slack-jawed expression. Behind him Anders saw what looked like dozens of waving hands, delicately fingered. The room was full of plants, tall ones, the ceiling hung with twisting cables and hoses, racks of lighting, misting systems. Anders immediately knew what this was. Last year he and Megan sat through the first three seasons of Weeds on DVD, before it got really stupid.

  Then a young woman stepped out, also dressed in black, her hair streaked with raven and vermilion, her face the pasty pallor of a Welsh miner. The young man slung his lantern jaw around at her and she raised an arm and pointed directly at Anders, now with one foot on the side fence, balancing.

  Anders dropped to the ground with that peculiar, surprising drunken dexterity that rarely happens when you need it, rolling over in the grass and to his feet in one motion. Inside the house he checked on Megan and Blake, both of them sleeping soundly. He locked the doors and windows, turned the alarm system on. He peered through the blinds of his back window, his pool glowing dully from the ambient light of Dallas, the dark fence, no light or movement on the other side of the alley. Anders looked up the nonemergency number and made the call to the police. The operator took down the information and said they would send someone by shortly to talk to him.

  Why do you have to come talk to me?

  Procedure, sir.

  But I don’t want to talk to you. I want you to go over there and bust a drug house. They are growing a ton of weed over there. And their pool is breeding mosquitoes.

  We need to take statements about what you witnessed.

  But I’m telling you now!

  I’m sorry, sir. The officers will be around shortly.

  Anders made himself a drink and was taking his first sip when the doorbell rang, booming through the house. Again? He could see a police officer standing on his porch. It had been about three minutes. The baby monitor registered the scuttle of blanket and stuffed animal as Blake scrambled to her feet to begin her ardent vocalizations.

  The cop introduced himself as Officer Meyer and shook Anders’s hand. He was a young man, maybe thirty, wearing wrap-around sunglasses, his neck raw from razor burn. At the curb an unmarked car sat idling, another cop in the driver’s seat, his face illuminated by the blue glare of a smart phone. Anders repeated what he had seen on the roof and Officer Meyer scribbled in a small notebook, nodding his head. Down the hall Blake’s siren pitched into something akin to an Apache blood lamentation.

  It’s good that you called us, sir, Officer Meyer said. This is important information.

  He tapped the notebook with his pencil. Officer Meyer had veins running across his biceps and his uniform was snug across the chest, like he had recently gained weight. The shoulders of his shirt had epaulets with gray bands, something Anders had never seen before.

  What are you going to do? Anders asked.

  I’m afraid I can’t reveal that, sir. Operational details.

  When he smiled he revealed a swath of misdirectional teeth like a collapsing fence line.

  Okay, Anders said. I understand. Don’t forget about the mosquito thing.

  Of course, sir.

  It’s really ruining our summer, you know? For the whole neighborhood.

  Officer Meyer grinned again and glanced back at his car for a moment, shoving his notebook into his back pocket. Anders realized why his
uniform looked strange across the chest: although Meyer had the silver Dallas Police Department badge over his breast pocket, he had no name tag. Did cops still wear name tags? Anders couldn’t remember. The night air shifted for a moment and Officer Meyer sort of sighed and relaxed his shoulders. Anders batted away a pair of mosquitoes that circled his face.

  We will take care of it, sir. Just do me a favor?

  What?

  Stay off the roof.

  * * *

  We need to call an exterminator, Megan said the next morning.

  Anders was trying to find his least wrinkled dress shirt in the closet, Blake wearing her Batman mask and clinging to his leg.

  We’ve got rats or something, Megan said.

  What?

  I could hear them through the ceiling.

  She drank her coffee in the doorway, bathrobe askew, a pair of Anders’s old boxers visible underneath. Unchanged, he thought. He felt like he was withering away and his wife hadn’t aged a day.

  Footsteps, Megan said. Running around all night. Creepy.

  * * *

  Friday evening the people two houses down were having a barbecue, so Anders lacquered himself up with deet and sat sweating on the chaise lounge, drinking a watery Jack Daniel’s and listening to the laughter and music. A squadron of mosquitoes hovered over his exposed skin searching for a weak spot. Blake trundled her stroller around the patio wearing a full-body caftan and a broad-brimmed hat with netting tucked into her collar that Megan had rigged up. Anders turned on the pool light, a great glowing eye in the deep end. Haven’t been in the damn thing in almost a month, he thought. Maybe I will tonight. A wave of nausea passed through him and he watched the glassy film of the pool for a moment, thinking about powerful chemicals on his skin, in his blood, rearranging his DNA, juggling the color-coded molecules of his being. He felt like shit. The people at the party started playing “puka shells,” Megan’s name for Kenny Chesney, so Anders figured he’d better get inside and start bedtime for Blake.

  They bathed her together, Anders playing counting games as Megan scrubbed the day’s accumulation of grime, sweat, and chemicals off her skin until she was pink and shining. Then Anders read three books to her in the big chair while Megan tidied up the room. Soon he turned off the lights and left them there, cuddling together in Blake’s bed, Megan asking a set of questions that Blake answered with a tiny, angelic voice. Anders stood in the darkened hallway, swaying, listening to his wife and daughter.