No Hope for Gomez! (4 page)

7.

Blog entry: Visited the clinic the next day. Went well, although I was a bit upset when the guy ahead of me came running from Dr. Hargrove’s office, chased by two large lab assistants. As he sped towards the exit, he shouted, “OVER MY FAT BODY!”

Wasn’t sure what to do. Decided the guy’s session was probably over and went in.

(Blog edit: I later had an opportunity to ask him if he’d meant to say: ‘Over my dead body!’ but to this he merely rolled his eyes and said; ‘Nothing’s
that
bad.’)

Dr. Hargrove seemed unfazed. “Hi, Gomez,” she said. “How are you doing?” She gestured to the chair opposite her desk. “Please have a seat so we can get started.”

“I’ve been good,” I said. “Great, in fact.” I nodded in the direction of the waiting room. “What was that all about?” 

Dr. Hargrove waved it away. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

She took a new questionnaire from her desk and jotted down my ID at the top. Apparently she knew it by heart. My worries melted as I tried not to wonder too hard what this meant. Beaming, I said, “Some people, eh? What can you do?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss other trial participants, Gomez,” Dr. Hargrove said, then she looked up from her form and whispered conspiratorially, “Especially if those participants were suffering from interactions due to a second trial they’d secretly signed up for.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking deep into her eyes and discovering at least two new colors. “I guess that would be something to keep under wraps.”

Dr. Hargrove gave me a quick, sweet smile, and started on her questions.

“Any dizziness, nausea, or headaches since your last visit?”

“Nope.”

“Difficulty swallowing?”

“Nope.”

“Unexpected feelings of elation or euphoria?”

“Not really, no.”

When she reached the last question, “Anything else that’s not on the list?” I told her how I’d felt a little out of breath about half an hour after our last session. “I suddenly started breathing very fast and very deeply,” I said, “for no apparent reason.”

“How long did this last?”

I cast my mind back. “I’d say less than two minutes… three tops.”

“Did it return at any point?”

I shook my head. “No. It happened just the once.”

Dr. Hargrove made some notes on the form. “Good,” she said. “Good.” She shot me another smile, which faded too quickly. “Anything else?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

The initial high from seeing Dr. Hargrove write down my ID from memory had dissipated and I began to notice she didn’t seem her usual self. She looked a bit down. A bit sad.

“Is everything alright?” I asked.

“What?” She looked up from her form. She’d been miles away. “Yes, Gomez,” she said, “you’re doing great, nothing to worry about.”

“I meant with you. Is everything alright with you?”

“Of course,” she said. But it seemed like an automatic response.

Blog entry: After taking my pills, I left the clinic and walked over to the zoo, which was a few blocks down the street. I bought a ticket and spent an hour wandering around, not exactly sure what I was looking for. There were no signs of anything lethal out in the open, of course, nothing you could come into contact with that would allow you to make it home safely and then lapse into a deadly coma. And, there were no signs of Joseph Miller having been there.

I made another circle of the entire compound, finding nothing.

Blog entry: Thinking over my next move, I bought a plastic crocodile and an ice cream cone at the souvenir stand. Immediately started to feel silly, so I gave the crocodile to a passing child. When I tried to give my half-eaten ice cream to another child, I ran into the first problem of the day.

Blog entry: Dusted myself off. Pushed some tissue up my nose to stop the bleeding. Ignored a sudden bout of intense déjà vu.

I also realized I shouldn’t be
looking
for clues, I should be
asking
for them.

Found one of the zoo people picking up the trash around a bin and asked her if she’d known Joseph Miller. She screwed up her face.

“He was a volunteer,” I offered. “38, dark hair, tall, wrote a blog about meatpacking?”

“Miller…” she said. “Miller...” She let the name roll around her tongue. “Yeah, I think I remember him. Wasn’t he John’s Tuesday afternoon monkey-poop scooper?”

“Could be,” I said. “Could be. So, where can I find this John? Is he working today?”

Blog entry: John
was
working that day. I found him out by the monkey cages as instructed. He was a thoughtful looking man in his mid-fifties. He sported a ruffled old fedora and a manly five o’clock shadow.

“Joseph Miller…” He shook his head. “No, sorry, never heard of him.”

“Are you sure? People around here seem to think he was your Tuesday afternoon monkey-poop scooper.”

“Ah,” John said. His face cleared, “Joe! Sure, I know Joe! Good guy. Quiet, but a hard worker. When he bothers to show up that is. Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He died,” I told him. “Passed out in his apartment, then dehydrated.”

“Really?” John shot me an incredulous look. “I can’t believe it. Joe? Are you sure?”

“Quite sure. Any idea what might have caused it?”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “Joe’s dead?”

“Yes. Is there anything around here he might have come into contact with that would make him pass out?”

John shrugged and shook his head. “All we have here are monkeys,” he said. “Monkeys, monkey feed, monkey poo, monkey pee. That’s it.”

“No chemicals?”

“Not really, no. We don’t even use delousing powders; the monkeys do it all themselves.”

“Could Joe have been allergic to the monkeys?”

“I guess,” John said. “But I don’t see how that would make him pass out.”

“If his throat swelled up, caused him to suffocate?”

John scratched his five o’clock shadow. “That’s a pretty severe reaction,” he said. “If Joe were
that
sensitive to anything around here, he wouldn’t have made back to his apartment.”

I was down to grasping at straws. “What if someone knew he was allergic to something, put it in his pocket, and Joe didn’t come into contact with it until he changed his clothes at home?”

John frowned. “You’re grasping at straws now, aren’t you?”

I could only shrug.

“What you’re suggesting is that Joe’s death wasn’t an accident.” John gave me a hard look. “If that’s the case, then maybe you should be looking at people who wanted him dead, not people who needed him to scoop up monkey poo.” He arched his brows.

“Well,” I said, and left it at that.

8.

Blog entry: Returned home tired and headachy. Decided to take the elevator instead of the stairs.

Blog entry: Made a mental note to stop using the elevator, even on tiring, headachy days. Resolved to make a little project out of determining which was more painful: (1.) Climbing eight flights of stairs, (2.) Running into Warren in the elevator.

Also realized I needed to examine the chances of running into Warren so often. I’d yet to run into any of my other neighbors.

I had to be extremely unlucky: No Hope for Gomez!

Blog entry: Reason the elevator run-in was so uncomfortable: Warren tried to hand me another manuscript.

He just happened to have it on him, he said, and thought I might want to take a look. It was roughly the same size as the previous script (very thick!), and I immediately understood this to be a huge indicator of its quality. Especially as Warren implied he’d written the whole thing since our previous encounter, several days earlier.

Warren said, “You’re like my only fan at the moment.” He grinned as if this was an obvious understatement. As if droves of fans were already resenting my position as the first person to glean his brilliantly ordered words.

“I’m sure that description is inaccurate on many levels.” I smiled.

The elevator stopped on my floor and I got off. I told Warren there was no chance in hell I was reading another one of his damn manuscripts and left him gaping at my receding back.

Blog entry: Prepared a quick dinner; fried eggs, slices of onion and tomato, potato chips. Found some time to cast my mind back over the events of the day. Next to Joseph’s unexpected death, I now had another pressing question about him; how had he managed to sink so low before he died? What had happened to the man who’d so vehemently described meatpacking? Had in fact likened it to the noble art of T-shirt folding? The man who’d written pearls of urban poetry like the ever elusive; ‘Ode to This Feeling of Having Forgotten Something’, and the surprising; ‘It Wasn’t My Keys This Time, I’m Sure’. What had this lost soul been reduced to? Not even a relief cashier, not even a Thursday morning litter collector. No, Joseph Miller had allowed the Universe to reduce him to being someone’s Tuesday afternoon monkey-poop scooper.

Oh, the humanity!

Blog entry: Burned my eggs, threw them out, made some toast. Watched reality TV until my mind went numb, then carried myself off to bed. Still managed to lie awake for hours, analyzing my feelings for Dr. Hargrove. Decided it was time to find out once and for all if my feelings were real (what
is
love?), or merely transference, a uniform fetish, or a drug induced side effect. For this, I surmised, I needed to devise an objective test. The primary goal of this test would be to determine if what I was feeling were indeed feelings. The secondary goal would be to determine if they were indeed
my
feelings.

As no such test came immediately to mind, I congratulated myself on a job well done and left actually devising the test for the next day. Relieved I’d figured out my next move, I was  relaxed enough to try to fall asleep.

Blog entry: Didn’t fall asleep. Spent the better part of the night listening to Warren drill holes in my floor.

Blog entry: Woke early. Still tired. Drilling hadn’t stopped. I’d have to offer to read Warren’s new manuscript. That wouldn’t be easy, I’d have to convince him my change of heart wasn’t related to the noise. I couldn’t let him know he basically had me on a leash.

9.

Blog note: Realize there’s a very simple and obvious test I can perform to determine the validity of my feelings for Dr. Hargrove. This test is so obvious and simple, it boggles the mind. Haven’t been able to work out what this test is, though, so I’ll have to concentrate harder.

Blog entry: Fast breakfast of orange juice and toast, then off to the store. Arrived early but Hicks was already waiting. He didn’t allow me to open before nine, so we waited around a bit. Looked like fair weather, carried some of the good crap out to the curb.

Blog entry: Slow morning. Sold some small wood pieces to a young couple for their collection. Think maybe the pieces were part of the counter, as they were attached to it with nails. Couple seemed pleased; decided not to worry about it.

Blog entry: Very quiet. No more customers. Only sounds were Hicks’ sweeping, my breathing, and a strange squeaking coming from the counter.

Blog entry: Resumed perusing Joseph’s meatpacking blog. Was back at square one with my private investigation, all I had to go on were Joseph’s ramblings. Little did I know I would soon stumble upon something that’d break the Miller case wide open.

I was going back and forth over his blog entries when, suddenly, my eye fell on a sidebar with some links and symbols. I’d been so engrossed in the entries that I’d neglected to take a good look at the design of the site itself. Most of the links in the sidebar were of no interest, but one of the symbols looked strangely familiar. It depicted a snake crawling along the outer rim of a circle. I couldn’t quite place it, but, as I hovered my mouse pointer over it, I noticed it was a clickable link. I clicked it and was taken to a page on a ratings site. As it turned out, Joseph’s blog had been voted the number 5 meatpacking blog in the country!

Who would’ve thought?

Immediately alarm bells went off in my head. Had Joseph become somewhat of a celebrity? Had he gathered a following that warranted investigation? Was this meatpacking blogging business more competitive than I’d thought?

This opened up several new lines of investigation, all of which might very well lead to the cause of Joseph’s demise. At least, that’s what I thought until I discovered that the meatpacking nomination page had in fact been visited by only seven people in the last two years.

Hardly what you’d call stiff competition.

Decided it was another dead end. Closed the ratings site.

Blog entry: “I’ve done the back,” Hicks said. He stepped out of the shadows holding his threadbare sweeper. “Anything else need sweeping?”

I looked up from my laptop and shook my head. “We’re probably alright for sweeping right now,” I told him. “Maybe you could take another look at those boxes we talked about?”

Hicks shrugged noncommittally.

“Or maybe you could update the window display again?”

Hicks shot a quick look at the window, then shook his head.

“I don’t suppose you’d like half a day off? Fully paid?”

Fear welled in Hicks’ eyes.

“No. I guess not.”

“So what’re you doing?” He came over to look at my screen. “You seem very engrossed in something.”

I turned the laptop so he could see better. “I was reading this blog,” I explained. “It was written by someone who died recently. I think he might’ve died of unnatural causes and I’m sure there’s something important in here, something that’ll explain what happened. I just can’t find it.”

“Let’s have a look.” Hicks made a good show of pretending to examine the blog, but then sighed and said, “Looks pretty boring, if you ask me.”

“That’s part of the problem,” I said.

“Maybe what you’re looking for isn’t in the blog,” Hicks suggested. “Maybe what you’re looking for is what’s
not
in the blog.” He arched his eyebrows in what he probably hoped was a mysterious manner.

“Yes,” I said. “That, in fact, is incredibly helpful.” I turned the laptop back round.

“Don’t mention it.” Hicks glanced over his shoulder. “I guess I could take another look at those boxes,” he said. “Maybe come up with a preliminary plan of action. Something to help whoever is going to move them.”

When I didn’t protest, he disappeared back into the shadows.

Blog entry: Resumed my analysis of Joseph’s blog entries, hoping to find hidden meaning in one of the messages. (
Today, I almost cut my finger. Must be more careful!
) Or a cryptic warning sign. (
Took an extra jumper to work. Looked like chilly weather.
) Or even a supernatural omen. (
Cut my finger. Somehow, I knew that was going to happen!
) But I didn’t find anything.

While I was trying hard to read meaning in nonsense, I had no idea that the actual clue was already clearly visible.

As I sat back, about to give up, it occurred to me that Hicks had made more sense than I gave him credit for. There was a lot more to the blog than just its sidebar and the actual entries. And, while I considered this, my eye fell upon the one bit of text in the blog that actually contained some useful information. Or, to be more precise, the one bit of text that didn’t contain the information it should.

I’d found an error. And I had a suspicion it was going to turn out to be a very important error.

Blog entry: Hicks returned from the back to don his oversized coat. “It’s five,” he said, almost accusingly. “I have to go.”

“Ah.” I checked my watch. “Right you are. Where did the time go?”

Hicks shrugged.

“Well, I’ll see you on Monday then.”

Hicks nodded and left. I shut down my laptop and closed up the store.

Blog entry: On my way home I realized I wasn’t sure what my next move should be. I’d discovered something, but there was nothing I could actually
do
with the information. It did seem to exonerate Dr. Hargrove, so that was a good thing. The only sequence of events that could still implicate her made her so incredibly evil, it wasn’t worth contemplating. So didn’t contemplate it. But there weren’t any follow-up steps I could take to further my investigation.

Decided to give it a rest for the evening.

Blog entry: Took the elevator and got off one floor early. Rang Warren’s doorbell and waited patiently for him to open. When he appeared, I asked him for his new manuscript. I had a neat little speech prepared, one which explained rather cleverly and conclusively that I wasn’t requesting the manuscript in order to stop the drilling, while at the same time making it subtlety clear that the drilling did in fact need to stop in order for me to appreciate the script fully. Before I could launch into this speech, Warren had already handed me the script, no questions asked.

Instead of relief, I felt a heavy burden land on my shoulders.

Sometimes there was just no joy in getting what you wanted.

Blog entry: Throughout dinner my mind kept going round in circles. The clue I’d found wouldn’t leave me alone. Decided to leaf through the first 1,000 pages of Warren’s new manuscript – the time was lost anyway.

Zoned out. Ended up staring off into space, contemplating a test to prove my feelings for Dr. Hargrove were real.

Blog entry: No ideas on the test. Decided to clear the dinner table.

Blog entry: Wondered about the experimental drugs in combination with certain foods causing dangerous side effects.

Decided never to eat broccoli again.